The Hero's Hero
by natemccizz98
Summary: When the Hero of Time is kidnapped by an recently-revived evil, a college student from our world is recruited by Zelda and the other Sages to rescue him.
1. Chapter 1

The buildings flew by me as I biked past them. The crisp mid-autumn crosswind I created numbed my face. The rest of me was covered pretty well by my khakis, my warm, green coat, my black gloves, my wooly green and gold hat, and my helmet. It was a Friday, and I had no homework due at all. I was thoroughly enjoying that feeling of freedom as I rode up and down the streets and bike paths within the University of Oregon campus. Though I was surrounded by thousands of students, I recognized few people. Most of these few were my housemates. I waved a greeting to each of them as I passed by, but for the most part, my ride was silent.

But I did not mind one bit. I was just starting my first year of college, and my first week was already finished, and with no outstanding assignments to turn in. I had never been freer in my life. Everything my parents, my teachers, my peers had told me was coming true; the world was mine to grasp, and I could do anything I set my mind to. And by golly, that was what I was going to do.

And that's when I noticed them. Two women standing outside the Erb Memorial Union on my left. One was younger, probably no older than my own eighteen years. She was somewhat tall, slender, and had long blond hair that cascaded down her shoulders halfway down her back. The other was older; she looked like she may have been in her early thirties, but had an aura about her that made her seem to transcend age. Her hair was close-cropped and whiter than a sheet of printer paper.

It wasn't their physical appearance that struck me, though. It was their garb. The young blonde wore a close-fitting pink dress with a decorated tabard down the front of the skirt. On her head was a cunningly-fashioned gold circlet, and her hands – along with the better part of each arm – were inside long, dainty, pinkish-white gloves. The taller, older woman was clad in what appeared to be a modest medieval take on a blue one-piece bathing suit, iron (or was it steel?) shoulder armor, and long off-white stockings. To the small of her back was strapped what appeared to be a short samurai sword. To be frank, they reminded me of cosplayers. Perhaps like something out of a video game. They had an oddly familiar look about them, but I could not place where I might have seen them before.

As I passed them, they seemed to regard their surroundings with cautious wonder. Then the young blonde and I locked eyes briefly. As I kept riding past them, her eyes lit up. Even after I'd put them behind me, I could feel her gaze following me. Where she may have recognized me from, I hadn't the foggiest notion, but something about me must have piqued her interest. I seriously hoped she hadn't found me attractive. To me, cosplayers were overzealous nerds who spent far too much time and money on their various obsessions. Aside from the first few minutes of self-consciousness at the blonde eye-balling me, however, I gave it no thought after those first few minutes.

…

The Onyx House, in which I lived, was a pleasant enough place. The place was an old sorority house until it was bought out by a church. Now it housed sixty co-eds like me, divided into a guys' floor and a girls' floor. It was just the sort of place one could do homework, read, watch movies, hang out, or just relax without so much invasion of privacy as the public buildings on campus. It was where I spent all my time while I was not at class. As such, it was familiar ground to me, and everyone living there was a friend of mine.

At the back of the house was a bike shed, where I now walked my bike. I punched in the combination to the lock and entered. The walkway in the bike shed was quite narrow, so, I must admit, it was a bit of struggle to get my bike parked. But once I managed it, I felt quite relaxed already. As I walked towards the door again, I took my helmet, winter hat, and gloves off. I was carrying these as I opened the door.

Walking right past the door were the two cosplayers. I froze in the doorway, hoping they didn't notice. But they were right there, and I wasn't winning any awards for blending in with my green coat. The blonde saw me immediately and stopped, eyes bright, as though something about me boded well for her. She skipped lightly up to me and straightaway said, "You look exactly like what we need."

Her statement was both confusing and off-putting at the same time. "What do you mean?" I asked uncomfortably.

The older of the two ladies looked at me gravely and replied, "We are in dire straits and need your help."

"Do tell," I said to the two.

At that, the blonde began to explain, "We come from a kingdom far from here. Our greatest hero has been captured by an ancient evil. We have looked far and wide for someone to rescue him."

All this sounded too good to be true; I had never heard of cosplayers actually believing they were the characters they tried to portray. But I decided to play along. "What exactly about me stood out?" I asked the blonde.

She answered this with a gesture at my green coat. "You dress as he does. And you also have hair like him." Thankfully, she didn't reach out and touch my hair, which was about as blond as hers.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but who exactly are you two?"

The blonde girl blinked once, then responded, "I am Princess Zelda of Hyrule, and my companion is Impa, my bodyguard."

And in an instant, it suddenly dawned on me why these two had looked so familiar to me. My eyes flew wide open. Any thought of these two being cosplayers staying in character left me immediately. "You two aren't going to believe this," I said to them, "but I've actually heard of you. It's not what you think, though. A lot of people here have heard of you. But you two are supposed to be fictional characters."

I could tell Impa was taken aback, by the look she gave me. "I can explain," I said sheepishly. "Follow me." Zelda nodded once, and I lead them into the Onyx House.


	2. Chapter 2

The Onyx House had numerous entrance doors. Nearest the bike shed was the door into the House's kitchen; it was open. I lead Zelda and Impa through the door and the kitchen. We walked straight across the kitchen and out its door into the dining room. As it was only 3:00, there was no one there. Those housemates of mine who _were_ on the main floor were in the two-part living room that adjoined the dining room. I was looking for one person in particular.

Finally, I saw her: Kaylee, a close friend of mine since I first moved to the House a week prior. She was about my height (and Zelda's, as it would happen), and sported a blonde-and-brown ponytail. She was the House's biggest Legend of Zelda fan, and (I'm sure) owned all the games, which she played frequently. As I approached her, her eyes lit up all too obviously at the sight of the pair following me. As we came together, she whispered excitedly, "Zelda cosplayers!"

I whispered in return, "I don't think these are cosplayers. They have no idea the Zelda games exist."

"You're telling me they're the real thing?" She asked, still in undertones.

I nodded. "Those aren't implants they're wearing on their ears," I answered, indicating their elongated, slender upper ears, which came to dagger-like points.

As I said this, Kaylee grinned ear-to-ear. "This is so cool," she told me, hardly able to keep her voice at a whisper. "Zelda and Impa are actually in our house."

"Yeah," I replied, "and I have a bit of explaining to do. Would you be able to show them whichever game they're from?"

"Oh yeah," he responded. "I'll go and fire up _Ocarina_." With that, she jogged across the living room towards the main stairs. Motioning to the two following me, I trailed Kaylee up the stairs.

The four of us hurriedly climbed two flights of stairs, past the guys' floor, up to the girls' floor. It was not the first time I had been up there; "floor hours," which was what we called the times boys and girls could visit each other's floors were from 2:00 to 10:00 at night, and as Kaylee was a close friend, I took full advantage of that fact to visit and watch her play her _Zelda_ games. We now jogged down the girls' floor – Zelda at a slower pace, hampered by her skirt – until we came to Kaylee's room.

As Zelda, Impa, and I entered her room, Kaylee was already firing up one of her profusion of consoles. "Make yourselves comfortable," she said to us. I let the two ladies sidle past me and take seats on the bottom bunk on either side of Kaylee. I asked if it was okay to sit on the top bunk, to which Kaylee readily nodded her assent. I ascended the short ladder to said bunk and sat on it – well, I actually reclined, as I didn't want my legs to get in anyone's field of view – and watched as Kaylee started a saved file on _Ocarina of Time_. From what I knew of this particular game (which, admittedly, wasn't a great deal), I could tell that it had been saved very close to the end. The polygonal, slightly pixelated Link appeared inside what appeared to be the dungeon of some grim, dark castle.

"Wait, that's Ganon's castle," exclaimed Impa.

I didn't even have to see Kaylee to know that she'd be grinning like a pyromaniac at the Fourth of July. She set her thumbs to the controller she held and played through the area, steering the Link on her screen to an area where a glowing pinkish shell hovered in midair. She thumbed through the equipment screen before finding what looked like an arrow with its head encased in solidified honey. This she selected, and – I guess – fired at the shell. To my surprise, a pixelated, polygonal version of Impa appeared, hovering in midair, before text ran below her and she disappeared.

"I remember that," Impa stated.

I poked my head down and looked at the three ladies on the bottom bunk. Kaylee was, predictably, grinning; Zelda was staring raptly at the TV screen; Impa's jaw had dropped. Kaylee continued to play through the game, repeating the same process six times, each time freeing a different character (whose names I didn't know at the time) from a colored capsule. Finally, she proceeded to a great room. And therein was a video game version of Zelda, encapsulated in a transparent purple prism.

I heard an audible gasp from Zelda on the bottom bunk. "I remember this too," she said. "This was when Ganon trapped me in a crystal, but Link saved me and defeated him. I remember sealing him two years ago!"

I guessed that Kaylee would be grinning wide enough to nearly unlock her jaw. This would have been the biggest geek-out moment for her, to show Zelda and Impa, of video game fame, a game based around their own exploits.

I climbed down the ladder and stood beside the bunk bed. I turned to the two oddly-dressed ladies and told them, "The entire storyline of this game was supposed to be fiction. At least, that's what we've all thought. I hope you'll pardon my surprise that you two actually exist."

"I would never have guessed that what befell us would have been known in another world," said Impa, breathlessly.

I nodded. "Now that we've established that you're real enough, could you tell us what's happened?"

I could tell Kaylee was interested in hearing whatever these two had to say. I was, too. This was so far out of the ordinary that I had to find out the cause of it. Zelda began her tale: "As you two know, two years ago, I, with the help of Link, Impa, and the other Sages, defeated and sealed away Ganon, the king of evil. The seal broke earlier than I expected, and Ganon has broken free. He has kidnapped Link to gain access to the peace of our Triforce that he carries. He plans to do the same to me for the piece I carry, and without Link, it will be all too easy for him to do so. Impa and I have come to this world searching for a hero who can rescue Link and help him defeat Ganon again. By chance, we happened upon you…" She indicated me as she spoke. "…So I must ask if you can come to Hyrule with us and perform this task."

I could see Kaylee was giddy with excitement. I almost wished it had been her that they found; she would have said yes without a second thought. I, on the other hand, had my reservations. "Can I think on it tonight?" I asked. "We have a church service here at the House tonight, and I want to be there."

Impa nodded. "While I cannot say we have much time to spare, I realize that this is not a decision to be taken lightly. We can give you a day or two to decide."

"Great," I replied. "In the meantime, we have a guest room on this floor if you two want to stay the night. Is anyone booked for the spare room, Kaylee?"

Kaylee shook her head.

So I nodded to the other two ladies. "I'll think on it," I told them.

They nodded their satisfaction. So, as Kaylee went to show them the spare room, I went down two flights of stairs to the living room, plopped myself down, and started thinking.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, what do you say?" Kaylee asked that night after the church service we'd held in the living room.

I looked at her as we sat on a couch in the dining room (normally it would have been in the living room). "I don't know," I returned. "I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this."

"You're the one who's always hiking Spencer Butte and studying wars on the Internet," she told me. "I'm sure you can handle it."

"What about you?" I asked her. "You know so much more about the Zelda games than I could ever hope to know. You'd be perfect for it."

She shrugged. "Like I said," she replied, "You're the one who'd conquer all the hiking. I just sit around all day doing homework or playing the games."

"We could both come," I said to her.

She immediately shook her head. "Nah, I'm working with the fourth and fifth graders on Sunday. You don't have anything this weekend."

"Yeah, but I have classes on Monday," I stated. "Those two would have to do some strange things to the time-space continuum to take me back in time so I could make my classes."

"They can," Kaylee answered. "Zelda sent Link back to his childhood at the end of _Ocarina of Time_. That reminds me, there _is_ something wrong here."

"Do tell," I encouraged.

So Kaylee drew breath. "Zelda said the whole ordeal in _Ocarina_ was two years ago. That would make her eighteen years old, if I remember right. She sent Link back to his childhood, so he shouldn't even be in the same timeline as this Zelda."

A corner of my mouth slid back in puzzlement. "There's got to be an explanation," I said to her.

"All the more reason why you should go. You can find out why Link is even there at all. Then you can tell me when you come back."

" _If_ ," I replied. "There's a chance I might not make it out of there. If I go, the next time you see me might be in a body bag."

Kaylee looked me in the eye. "You won't fail," she said. "And you won't die either. I know you too well. I know you'll make it through alright."

"What if something happens and I'm trapped in there?" I asked. "I want to return."

"You can do it," she responded. "I know you can. You'll be fine. You'll kick Ganon's butt. And then you'll get to tell me all about it."

With a sigh, I said, "I hope."

Kaylee smiled at me. "You'll do it, then?" she inquired.

"I suppose," was my reply. "I just need to get some sleep. And one last night in my own bed."

…

My alarm clock woke me up at 7:00 in the morning. Groggily, I somehow remembered that it was a Saturday, and that I had, almost automatically, turned on my alarm (despite not having anything to do that day) the night before. With some effort, I sat up to turn my alarm off and climb out of bed. As I got myself dressed, I started trying to plan out my Saturday. It was then when I had remembered that I'd agreed to accompany Zelda and Impa into whatever parallel universe they came from and help them save Link.

I snorted a little at that. From the little I knew of _Zelda_ games, Link was always the one doing the saving. The thought of him needing someone else to save his own hide seemed a little absurd. But the two ladies seemed serious about it, so I, of course, had to check out the situation.

But I wouldn't go without some preparation. After dressing, I grabbed a large camping backpack from an alcove on my side of the dorm room and into it packed my green coat, some of the snacks I kept in my room, and four changes of clothes. I included jeans among this, as I was wearing shorts at the time. I lay the backpack on the bed before grabbing my cell phone, almost out of force of habit. With this last in my pocket, I ventured downstairs into the House kitchen.

After I'd finished toasting a bagel and pouring raisin bran into a bowl, I brought my breakfast out to the dining room. Kaylee was already there, more awake than I was. As I sat beside her, I could feel her gaze on me. There could only be a big grin on her face, I knew. I chose to eat my breakfast without much discussion.

As I finished up, though, Kaylee asked me, "You going with them now?"

I stood up with my empty plate, bowl, and cup. "Yeah. Best keep the waiting to a minimum."

Her smile only got bigger. "You get 'em, Brian," she said playfully.

I managed a small smile. "I promise you," I told her, "once I'm done, I'll come back."

She smiled and we hugged quickly. Then I went into the kitchen to rinse my dishes and put them on racks to be placed later into the sanitizer. Absently, I remembered I had dishwashing duties after dinner that night. I hoped I could get back before then.

After my business with my dishes was finished, I returned to my room and grabbed my backpack. With it upon my back, I practiced a few quick punches at air, then descended the stairs to face whatever fate I might have in store.

Zelda and Impa were in the living room when I arrived, as was Kaylee; she must have finished her breakfast while I'd been getting ready. I stepped up to the three of them and said, "I'm ready."

Zelda and Impa nodded deeply, solemnly. They walked up close to me. Zelda pulled a blue ceramic ocarina from the folds of her skirt and raised it to her lips. She played a simple tune upon it, gentle and oddly comforting in its familiarity. At length, I perceived the three of us were inside a transparent blue prism, slowly rising into the air. Our surroundings gradually began to fade.

I looked down and caught one last glimpse of Kaylee smiling broadly. Her mouth moved, and I heard remotely, like a word of conversation spoken across a stage: "Go get 'em, Brian!"

And then, all sound and sight of my home vanished, passing into shadow, and I into uncertainty.


	4. Chapter 4

For a moment, the world around the crystal in which I, Impa, and Zelda stood was completely white. I began to wonder if the song Zelda had played on her Ocarina was the wrong song. After all, I knew from the few times I had watched Kaylee playing _Ocarina of Time_ that different ocarina tunes caused different events to occur. I began to fear if Zelda had inadvertently done harm to us.

But then, slowly, gradually, blurry lines and colors began to fade into our surroundings. Below us, I could see a grey stone floor rising slowly to meet us – or rather, the crystal descending to meet it. As the crystal touched down, I began to see the walls of some vast room materialize, and, nearer at hand, five figures standing directly in front of us.

At length, the crystal dissolved, and everything came into clear focus. We were standing upon a Triforce symbol of polished grey stone, set in a white marble floor. The walls of the room, too, were of gleaming white marble, as were the columns on either side of it. At one end, there was a great wooden doorway, and at the other, a dais, upon which sat three large, faceted stones. Behind the dais, there was another room, but what it held, I could not tell.

Immediately in front of us were five humanoid beings, watching me, Zelda, and Impa expectantly. One was a massive, sandstone-colored hulk with large limbs and rocky spikes protruding from its head and jaw. Next to this colossus was an old man, tall and stocky, with a white topknot, sideburns, and mustache. He was magnificently robed, like a member of a royal court.

Before the two larger beings (who I'd guess were both men) stood three women of varying stature. One was quite small and slight – a child, to my eyes; she wore a green tunic, soft leather boots, and a leather band in her green hair (I kid you not, _green_ hair). Beside her stood what appeared to be a cross between a human and an amphibian, clad in a scaly garment, with blue skin akin to that of a dolphin, fins on each limb, and a broad head. The last was a lady who appeared to be starting her thirties; she was also an odd-looking sort, with a copper complexion, a long, scarlet ponytail, and large, piercing eyes. Though ill-clad, what really struck me about her was the pair of long, broad scimitars crossed in scabbards at her back.

Zelda faced these five and said to them, "Sages, we have found someone to rescue the Hero of Time. This is…" she looked at me, obviously hoping I would finish the sentence for her.

So I did. "I'm Brian Glenn," I said. "I'm from Eugene, Oregon. So where's Link?"

The splendidly-dressed old man stepped forward, appearing to scrutinize me for a second. Then he said, "Welcome to Hyrule, Brian Glenn."

I nodded my acknowledgement to the man, before Zelda turned to me and said, "Brian, this is Rauru. He is the Sage of Light. He and the other Sages…" she swept her arm to indicate the whole gathering. "…have agreed to guide you throughout our kingdom."

Standing behind her, Impa added, "I hope, for Ruto's sake, that you can rescue Link quickly."

Curious, I asked, "Who's that?"

In answer, the amphibian spoke out: "I am. Link and I are married."

This bit of information did surprise me, as I had always thought that Zelda and Link were destined in every game to be married. Still, I wasn't too shocked; after all, being part amphibian wasn't keeping Ruto from being quite good-looking.

After pondering this for maybe two seconds, I looked at the whole gathering and said, "Then I guess I'd better get started."

Rauru nodded, and I and the other seven occupants of the great room exited via the great wooden doors.

…

The building sat near a towering castle built of light-grey stone. It was into this castle that Zelda, Impa, the Sages, and I entered. From its courtyard, we parted ways. I was instructed to follow Impa, which I did. Now it was her leading me through the corridors and stairways of the castle. Presently we came to a room which appeared to house an armory. Impa strode into the place, selected a fair-sized metal heater shield and a long, light sword in its case, and passed these to me. "This mission will probably involve some fighting," she told me. "It would be a wise idea to go armed." Gratefully, I accepted the weapons, and began to strap them on, before we left the armory.

As we walked back through the castle, I heard a bell toll once. I inquired Impa about the tolling, to which she answered, "We will have to relocate outside the castle. We will be accompanied by a company of Hylian knights. The bell was to call them."

"Where are we relocating to?" I asked.

The taller lady replied, "To a ranch several miles south of the town. It's built on a high rock in the middle of the plains, and serves as our army's headquarters in times of war. We will use it as our base of operations, as it is closer to where we believe Link is held captive."

As she finished this explanation, we came back out into the main courtyard of the castle. Zelda and the Sages had gathered there, as had twelve young men (the pointy-eared version of men, at least) in plate armor, swords already girded on. Without a single word, all arose and fell into marching order. And so we left the castle grounds and passed through the surrounding city.

The town around the castle was bustling with people, engaged in all manner of activities. We passed numerous shops selling a great many wares. The whole thing seemed too real to be a video game. The people in the streets moved aside at our passage, and most stood in reverence, of Zelda, I guess.

The city itself covered a large area as well, and it took our small troop a half-hour to get from the castle to the outer walls of the city. In the wall was set a rather small gateway, with a wooden drawbridge over a narrow moat. I realized these fortifications would do little to stop a determined attacker, and the moat seemed just a gesture, if anything.

Before the walls of the city stretched a vast, flat plain. There was a single dirt track, which immediately bent to our left (from the sun's position, I guessed it ran east). Our party began to walk straight across the soft, springy grass of the plain.

Up ahead several miles, I could see a rocky hill, upon which I could just make out what appeared to be a wooden palisade. This, I guessed, was the ranch to which we were headed. Remembering Kaylee's words of encouragement, _Go get 'em, Brian_ , I took a deep breath as we continued on towards the hill.


	5. Chapter 5

The march across the great plain took around four hours. Always, the rocky hill was before us, getting ever nearer. Directly behind us lay the city with its great castle towering to an unbelievable height. Behind and to either side of the castle, a high rocky plateau dwarfed the surrounding lands. Just to the east of the castle, a narrow valley pierced the plateau, under the shadow of an awe-inspiring mountain, almost perfectly conical, and topped with some ancient volcanic crater. West of the castle, the plateau continued, ringing the plain, punctuated only by a single valley. Directly east of us, I could make out the eaves of a great forest. And always we drew nearer to the high rocky hill, crowned with its palisade.

As we approached the foot of the hill, I could discern the red roofs of some buildings within the palisade. The place did not seem so much like a ranch, as much as a stronghold. One, in fact, to rival the soaring castle to its north. Perhaps even to rival the great fortresses and castles in my own world. We journeyed around the foot of the great hill until we reached its southern slope, which was a far easier climb than its northern or western slopes. It was there that we approached the gate into the ranch. The ascent was easy, but the gate was set in a well-built wooden palisade, topped by a battlement, upon which I could see the tops of helmets as a number of soldiers patrolled. A clear, sweet horn call greeted our approach, answered with the opening of the gate.

The "ranch" seemed to me more like a military encampment on the inside. The red-roofed buildings contained smithies, kitchens, and numerous small, simple dwellings. There were two large open areas; one contained a ring, inside which several horses grazed, and the other hosted several soldiers engaged in training.

Finally, our small party stopped before a large house, the only building that appeared remotely ranch-like about the place. A young woman around my age came out through the front door to greet us. She was a little shorter than me – perhaps three or four inches under my own five feet and seven inches – and was garbed in a plain white dress with blue trim. She let her red hair fall naturally over her shoulders, and her keen brown eyes surveyed us. Eventually, she curtseyed to Zelda. "Welcome, honored guests," she said, "to Lon-Lon Ranch, my home."

Zelda dismissed the soldiers who had accompanied us, and she stepped forward to greet the redhead with the Sages; while she was stepping forward, Impa ushered me forth as well. Zelda granted the redhead a sisterly embrace, as did Impa. Clearly, the redhead was on friendly terms with the two.

Then Zelda spoke: "I've brought someone you may want to meet, Malon. This…" She indicated me. "…is Brian Glenn."

Malon, the redhead, turned to study me. After a few seconds, as if satisfied with whatever she saw, she nodded and asked Zelda, "Is this the one who is going to rescue Link?"

Zelda nodded. Immediately, I felt the reality of the task at hand sink in. I had just surveyed the environs around the castle, and they seemed so much grander than anything I could possibly hope to encounter in a video game. The magnitude of the challenge would be great, I realized. For a split second, I almost wished I was writing a term paper.

The thought faded quickly, though, as Impa turned to me and said, "We'll use this ranch as our base of operations while you plan the rescue. As we're on a bit of a war footing, this ranch is doubling as a military garrison, so there is ample space and provisions for all of us to stay here for a good while."

I nodded in acknowledgement, before Zelda said, "Now that we're here, we might as well make ourselves comfortable." She, Impa, and the other Sages went their own separate ways. Malon and I were left standing in front of her house. After a few awkward seconds, I looked at the shield I'd been carrying. If I was going to be doing any fighting, I decided, I would need to know how to handle the weapons I carried. So I walked over to the training ground, hoping maybe to find a sparring partner and some practice weapons.

…

It was another five hours before I managed to drag myself into one of the dwellings, completely exhausted and dripping with perspiration. I had spent all of those hours sparring with numerous different soldiers with hefty, durable wooden swords and spears. I had learned a lot from the troops, which probably spoke mostly to my total lack of experience in actual combat. Sure, I spent hours on end researching military history on the internet, or hiking the trails and climbing the numerous large hills around Eugene. But fighting on an individual level forced me to combine everything I knew about military strategy, distill it to a small scale, and recall all the physical training I had done in my spare time to stay in shape, all in one chaotic scenario after another.

Now I leaned my shield and my metal sword against an unclaimed bed, wiping the sweat from my brow with my U of O t-shirt. I laughed to myself at what a ridiculous sight I looked in this entire world, with my modern fashions juxtaposed with the simpler, older garments of this world's denizens. If I ever found Link, I imagined, he would likely be confused by my strange garb.

A door inside the building opened, and a person stepped into the room who, to my eyes, appeared like a ninja. She – I could tell the figure was a she – wore a tight blue suit, tall, cream-colored socks and soft black shoes. Her head was crowned with a tight cap of white gauze, and her face, save for her eyes and bangs, was obscured by a mask of the same white gauze. Printed upon the front of her suit was an odd device: a red eye, crowned by three triangles – like rays of light or arrowheads – and atop a single, long tear.

The ninja walked up to me and asked, in a muffled but familiar voice, "How does it look?"

My eyes narrowed slightly as I tried to figure out who this unknown figure was. Then she took off her cap and mask, revealing Zelda's face underneath. Startled, I replied, "I didn't recognize you. Is that what you wear when in action?"

Zelda nodded. "This is how I disguise myself when I wish to remain undetected. I managed to fool even the Hero of Time for a good two months while he was banishing Ganon's evil two years ago. The time may come soon when I have to wear this again."

I nodded soberly at that. I hoped Link would be easy to find, and just as easy to rescue. It would mean that Zelda and her kingdom would have someone more qualified than myself to defend them.

Then, too tired to do anything else, I pulled open the sheets on the bed I'd just claimed and immediately lay down, falling asleep within seconds.


	6. Chapter 6

I awoke the next morning to the crowing of a rooster. I turned over in bed, wondering what kind of moron had brought a rooster into Eugene. When the rooster crowed again, I forced myself to open my eyes.

There was a bed next to mine, upon which a young blonde slept.

I sat up immediately, disoriented. I was in a room with rustic wooden walls and floors and wooden rafters. It suddenly occurred to me that I was not in the Onyx House. Everything flooded back into my memory now: the crystal, the vast marble room, the castle, the march across the plains, the ranch upon the rocky hill. I was not in Eugene, not even in the United States. I was in…I wracked my brain trying to remember what the land I was in was called…Ah, yes! I was in a land called Hyrule. The blonde whose bed was placed aside mine was Zelda, and I was in one of the numerous buildings in the ranch.

Slowly, carefully, so as not to wake the princess (or was she a queen by now?), I eased myself out of bed, still in my clothes from the day before. I rummaged around in my backpack, finding a change of clothes. Then I hesitated. Surely it wasn't good form to change in front of a princess, even if she was asleep. I could roll under the bed and do it, I thought, but that would be awkward and I'd stand a good chance of getting splinters in my rear end.

There was a door at one side of the room, apart from the door which I knew led outside. I stealthily made my way to the former and opened it. There was a small changing room on the other side, into which I slipped. After I closed the door behind me, I began to hurriedly change clothes. After a minute and a half, I stepped back out into the larger room. After walking past the bed upon which Zelda slumbered, I deposited my old clothes beside my backpack, slipped my shoes on, and, as quietly as I could, slipped out the door.

The sky bore the grey light of the early morning as I walked around the lonely ranch. A few soldiers were out; most of these were those patrolling the palisade. I crossed the practice field and ascended to the wooden battlement. There, I looked out to the east.

The sun was slowly ascending in the sky; fully a third of it was exposed. It was bright, beautifully bright, but oddly, it was not blinding. It was like a sun in a perfect dream world. It rose above the vast forest across the plain to the east. At once, I wished I had brought a camera with me. But I shook my head. A camera would have only wasted space.

There was a light footstep on the battlement, and someone stood right next to me. I looked over to see Zelda, still in her blue suit with the red eye, but without the cap or mask. Apparently, she must have awoken soon after me. We now stood side-by-side, looking out to the eastern lands.

At length, she indicated the great forest and said, "Those are the Lost Woods. Within its heart is the home of the Kokiri."

I looked at her quizzically, which she almost immediately noticed. "The children of the forest," she elaborated. "Saria, one of the Sages, is one of them." I assumed she meant the diminutive girl with the green hair and garments.

After a while, I replied, "That's cool. Is that where Link is?"

Zelda shook her head, and beckoned me to follow her. She lead me along the battlement almost halfway around, until we faced nearly due west. She pointed to the narrow valley I had seen before in the western plateau. "That valley leads to the home of Ganon's people, the Gerudo."

That was yet another name I had not yet heard. "Who are they?" I asked her.

"A tribe of thieves," Zelda replied. "They live in an arid region; it is all they can do to survive. Nearly all of them are women. One of our Sages, Nabooru – she's the one with the swords – is of that people. Men are seldom born among them. It is something which only occurs once in a century. These men become their kings. Ganon was one of these rare men."

"A tribe of nothing but women," I mused, fascinated. "Like the Amazons."

Now it was Zelda's turn to be curious. "They were an ancient tribe of female warriors," I explained. "They were some of the most feared fighters of their day. They never brought men to war, even if they were their husbands or sons."

Zelda nodded, satisfied at my explanation, before continuing, "Our best guess is that Link is being held prisoner in the Gerudo people's great fortress, which is built into the walls of the valley. Ganon may also be there."

"So how does one get in?" I asked.

Zelda grimaced. "The fortress has only two gates. One opens into the valley. The other opens into a vast desert, which forms the majority of their territory, and lies at the other end of the valley from us. Both gates are heavily patrolled. To venture in those ways means certain capture."

I mirrored Zelda's grimace. This endeavor was beginning to seem like a very tall order. "If we can't get in through those ways, then how do you suppose we approach the place?"

The blonde princess looked at me. "That's what I was hoping you might be able to figure out," she answered."

Groaning inwardly, I turned to look back at the entrance to the valley. A frontal entrance was utter folly; that was plain. There was no way of going around the fortress, as it seemed from Zelda's words that it was part of the valley itself, and there was no way around to the desert. Digging was obviously not going to work, the sandstone walls of the valley likely turned into even harder bedrock below the ground. Scaling to the plateau would be difficult in the extreme.

And then my mind stopped. Scaling the plateau. It was the only way that was even halfway feasible. But it would be hard. That plateau had to be easily a hundred feet above the plains. But it was either that or nothing. "If we could get to the top of the plateau," I began to ask, "would it be easy to get from there into the fortress?"

Zelda's eyes widened. "It would," she responded. "The fortress is shaped like a massive stair up to the plateau. You could easily get from the top to the highest part of the fortress. It would be surmounting the plateau that would be the biggest challenge."

But I was already thinking as soon as the first sentence left her lips. It was about five seconds after she'd finished speaking that I said, "I'll need a hundred feet of rope, a long metal spike, and a small pick."

Zelda blinked several times. "Those will get you to the top?" she asked.

I grinned. "With some luck, they will."


	7. Chapter 7

I spent most of the rest of the day training. Various craftspeople in the ranch were notified of my supply request. Immediately, a small hand pick was sent to the room I had slept in. A courier rode to the town near the castle to order a hundred feet of good, strong rope. A blacksmith working at the ranch began to fashion the spike.

Meanwhile, there was not a moment of stillness in my day. I cannot begin to say how many laps around the foot of the ranch's hill I ran, nor how many laps atop the wooden palisade. I spent hours practicing my sword-work, and Nabooru, the sword-bearing Sage, drilled alongside me, mostly to show me the techniques her people used in combat, so I could learn how to defend against them. After the sun went down and everyone else had ceased weapons training, I did push-ups, sit-ups, and lunges almost non-stop late into the night.

I may have been already quite fit from biking to classes and hiking a great deal, but even this training routine burned me out. Almost as soon as my back hit the bed, I had dropped off.

…

The next day, the blacksmith finished the spike. It was long – about two feet in length – and made of thick iron, with a strong, sharp point at one end and a large, flattened butt end. When it was shown to me, I nodded approvingly. It would more than serve the purpose I intended for it.

That day was mostly the same as the one before – mostly occupied with physical and combat training. In addition to swordsmanship, I practiced handling a spear, unarmed combat, and archery. It was the unarmed fighting that I took to most quickly, and I advanced rapidly to the point where I was winning wrestling or boxing matches against some of Hyrule's finest knights.

My sword training was also progressing well. I had mastered the basics – or at least, I was proficient enough to hold my own in a sparring match – and was beginning to learn some finer techniques. Under the combined tutelage of Impa, Nabooru, various knights, and the powerful hulk of a Sage – whose name, I learned, was Darunia – I was turning into a competent fighter. Certainly not a warrior of Link's legendary skill, but I at least could defend myself if need be.

The rope was sent later that day, as I was running laps around the ranch. I was met by Malon as I got back into the gate, when she informed me of this. I immediately went to test its strength. After I'd gotten Saria, the young, green-clad Sage, to climb up and tie one end of the rope to the wooden bean over the ranch's main gate, I repeatedly climbed up and down the rope using just my arms. The rope did not break, neither did it strain. It would definitely stand up to the task I was planning for it.

At the end of the day, I had determined when the rescue mission would begin. We would set out the day after the next. I would spend most of that day preparing mentally, rather than physically, for the mission. Part of it was to give my muscles some rest and ensure I would be in peak condition. The other part of it was so I could share my plan with the other Sages.

I bedded down for the night, optimistic for the first time since my arrival in Hyrule.

…

The next afternoon, I stood at a large wooden table with Zelda and the other Sages. A model of the valley and the enemy fortress had been made in sand, by Nabooru (who knew the area around her home better than anyone in the ranch), upon the table. I was explaining my plan to the gathering.

"What I'm hoping to do here," I explained, "is to get myself and maybe two others up to the top of plateau on the northern side of the valley. We will skirt around the end of the river canyon, and approach the fortress from its eastern side. The top structure is built into the cliffs, near the top of the plateau. Getting to that structure should therefore be easy. I've been informed that the fortress is tiered in twenty-two-foot increments, so some climbing will be necessary. The inside of the fortress is a network of passageways, with holding cells placed randomly throughout. We will try to navigate this network until we find Link's cell. Once there, we will quietly overpower any guards, take their keys, and use them to break Link out of wherever he is held. From there, I hope we will be able to retrace our steps and come back the way we got in."

The others leaned over the model terrain as I spoke. As soon as I'd finished, Nabooru asked, "What about adding a diversion at the gates with some of our soldiers. It will draw their attention."

I shook my head. "I don't even want the enemy to think we're doing anything. Besides, if we send a force out there to engage, they may send someone to where Link is held and finish him off. Or they might pull inside their fortress, meaning we'll be more likely to get caught. Or they'll know it's a diversion, and immediately start looking for us. This operation…" I almost smiled at that word. "…needs to be as stealthy as possible."

There was silence for a few moments. Then Ruto, the amphibian, spoke up. "Who exactly are you planning to take with you?" she asked.

I paused. That was the single thing I had not yet thought about. But I did see a couple people at that table who would be ideal. "I was thinking maybe Impa and Nabooru."

Nabooru was already shaking her head. "I realize you think I might blend in well," she said. "But most of my people will recognize me. Ganon has declared me to be a traitor, so they will be looking for me. I would only make you easier to catch."

"Then I can go," came a younger voice. We all turned to face it. The voice was Zelda's. She bore a hardened look, like a warrior, that I'd never seen before. "Impa has trained me well. I can handle myself if need be. Besides, I've been around that fortress too. I know it well enough to guide you and Impa through it."

From the look in her eyes, I could tell that neither I nor anyone else was going to be able to dissuade her. "It's settled, then," I said. "Tomorrow, we're going to get Link out of there."

They all nodded, and we exited the room we were in. As we were leaving, I lightly tapped Zelda's shoulder. As she turned to me, a questioning look in her eye, I asked, "Is there any way I could get one of those fancy red-eye suits?"

Zelda grinned and nodded.


	8. Chapter 8

_Click!_ went the pickaxe into the bare sandstone of the plateau. I hacked away at the rock, sending crumbling chunks falling past my shoulders and legs to the ground, more than eighty feet below. I was wearing a bodysuit like Zelda's, emblazoned with a tearing red eye, the rope dangled from my back – to which it had been tied – and my recently-acquired sword was strapped to my back, as was the iron spike. I was hacking holds in the face of the precipice. As I formed each one, I ascended about six inches further up the cliffs. It was slow going, but the sun was still halfway between the eastern horizon and the zenith. I could keep at this for a long time before dusk fell over the land.

Below me were Zelda and Impa, wearing similar dark-blue bodysuits. In addition, Zelda was wearing her gauze cap and mask, and Impa had put a coat of dark paint on the iron pauldrons over her outfit. They were standing there, waiting for me to reach the top of the plateau, and all the while, they were looking around to ensure that no Gerudo fighters emerged from the valley. So far, they had given me no warning, so I figured we were safe.

It took me another fifteen minutes to reach the top. After hacking out the last hold, I got my arms on top of the rocky face and pulled myself up and over the edge. Immediately rising to a kneeling position, I slid the spike out from where I had tied it to me, and planted it in the rock, giving it a few good whacks with the pickaxe to drive it in. To the spike I tied one end of the rope. Then I waited.

Zelda was the next up, jumping to get to the rope. She immediately grabbed it and started to pull herself up with her arms, as I'd done when I'd tested the rope's strength. She managed to scale the cliffs in this manner quite rapidly, and, in a single powerful burst, had ascended all the way to the top in about thirty seconds, before she stood beside me, our outfits matching.

Impa was even more impressive. She ignored the rope completely and went the entire way using my handholds and footholds, climbing like a cat. The holds weren't very wide, so the older lady was often kept on the cliff by the last inch of her fingers and toes. Still she climbed on, at a slower, but more rhythmic pace than Zelda. It took her just over a minute and a half to reach the top of the plateau. Once she was up, I took the spike out of the rock, untied the rope, and tied both to me. Then we set off in a northwesterly direction.

As we walked, I turned to Zelda. "By the way," I said to her, "there's something my friend from home wanted me to ask you."

Zelda's eyes – which were the only part of her face I could see – widened. "Ask away," she said in a muffled voice.

"Well, Kaylee told me that in the story of the game she plays involving you," I stated, "you sent Link back to his childhood. This was supposed to be two years ago, right?"

"It has been two years," Zelda returned. "And I _did_ send Link back to his childhood. But a part of his spirit was left behind in his sixteen-year-old body. Thus, I'd imagine, there is a second Link in some alternation of the past. If my knowledge of the fabric of space and time is correct, both Links possess within them the Triforce of Courage."

That lead me to another question. "You've told me about this Triforce thing before. What exactly is it?"

This time, it was Impa who replied. "The Triforce is a powerful, triune relic. Its three parts represent courage, power, and wisdom."

"I possess Wisdom," Zelda continued, showing me the back of her right hand. I saw that a strange symbol on her hand was glowing. It depicted three gold triangles, stacked one atop two, pointing from her wrist to her fingers. The bottom-left portion of the symbol glowed with particular intensity. "Link possesses Courage," she continued. "And, up until two years ago, the Gerudo king Ganondorf possessed Power. It seems, however, that he has broken the Seal I and the other Sages made on him and re-obtained the Triforce of Power."

I nodded, satisfied with the conversation, and the three of us continued to walk on. As we began to skirt the river gorge, I realized what I was about to do; I was on my way to break into a heavily-defended fortress, navigate through it, and rescue someone within. The anticipation filled me with a good amount of dread. But I kept going.

Around that time, I became aware that my right hand was experiencing a vibration, as if a cell phone had been placed on it. I ascribed it solely to nerves, though, and continued walking. That is, until Zelda stopped. Impa and I stopped a few paces ahead, and turned to her, confused and concerned.

Zelda looked at us in turn. "My Triforce is resonating," she said cryptically. She showed us her hand again; the Triforce symbol on her hand glowed even brighter than it had before. Before I could puzzle out what this meant, Zelda suddenly looked at me and pointed. "Your hand is glowing," she stated.

That got my attention, and I noticed again, the vibration of my right hand. I lifted it up to look at it. And there, I saw it: three gold triangles, stacked one atop two, shining brightly, with the lower-right portion flashing brightly enough to nearly blind me. Zelda came over and inspected it, as did Impa. At length, Impa said, "That's the Triforce of Courage."

Immediately my heart sank. "That can't be right," I said, unwilling to believe what I saw. "No, that's not right. No, no, _no_!" I walked around in a tight circle, scratching frantically at the mark, trying to make it leave me. But it would not, and continued to glow. With a fierce cry, I rubbed vigorously at it with the sleeve of my bodysuit, but still it remained.

"It's no use," Impa said. "The Triforce of Courage has left the Hero of Time and chosen you to be its bearer."

"But I don't _want_ to bear it!" I half-stated, half-shouted, turning to face the two women. "Do you know what this means? If what you're saying is right, it means _I'm_ some sort of chosen hero. But I don't want to be that. I want to just go home when this is all over. I don't want to have to stay here for the rest of my life. I just want to break Link out and get out of this place!"

Zelda walked over to me and put an arm around my shoulder. "When this is all over, when Link has been rescued and Ganon defeated, we can find a way."

"Good," I replied, "because Triforce or no Triforce, I'd go crazy living here the rest of my life. I'm just going to get Link out of here, help him out with whatever he needs to do, and go home."

Still with an arm around my shoulders, Zelda responded, "I don't know if it is possible for a Triforce bearer to leave Hyrule. But if it can be done, I promise you, we will help you return to your home."

I calmed down, realizing I had been breathing hard and fast during this scare. "Thanks," I said. We hugged briefly – I felt more than a little awkward, since she was a single, a princess, and my age – before, along with Impa, we continued once more towards the fortress where, hopefully, Link was held.


	9. Chapter 9

**Before this chapter gets going, I guess I'd better put in my first author's note; I will try to cover as much as I can so I won't have to put in too many more. First of all, the Legend of Zelda video games, and all of their characters, were created by Shigeru Miyamoto (hope that spelling is correct), are distributed by Nintendo, and feature soundtracks by Koji Kondo (yes, I'm a music nerd). Second, I realized before the last chapter that my idea for a Triforce transfer would be unpopular, not to mention difficult to explain my way out of. I shall endeavor to do this either in the next chapter or the one following that. My own main purpose in it was twofold: to create inner conflict for Brian, and to make his "operation" more difficult. You'll see why here. Third, I have received intelligence that people are wondering if I will pair Zelda and Brian. I will confess that I have seriously considered this. But it isn't final yet. I figure I will let the characters themselves decide on this (they've become voices in my head at this point). Finally, I wish to extend my thanks to a certain reviewer, whose identity I do not know, for pointing out my mistake as far as which hand Triforces appear on, as well as which part is which. I have realized my blunders, and have fixed them. Hopefully the last chapter will show up in its edited form. Now, without further ado, here is the next chapter; I hope you find it to your liking.**

...

We got to the enemy fortress in good time. The sun was in the dead center of the sky when we stopped at the edge of a cliff, twelve feet above the top of the highest structure of the fortress. For several minutes, we looked downwards, watching the numerous ill-clad guards patrol the ground behind the main gate. These were armed with lethal-looking curved blades affixed to long staves. It was probably best to avoid them, I reasoned.

As we stood watching, Zelda spoke, for the first time in thirty minutes. "I hope our Triforces stop resonating once we're inside the fortress," she said. "I'd rather not have our position betrayed by some stupid buzzing."

I nodded soberly at that. I still wasn't happy over the brilliant mark on my hand. "How do you think it left Link?" I asked. "Has Ganon killed him?"

"I don't know," Zelda replied. "If he is still alive, we will have to speak with Rauru on this when we return. He has lived longer than anyone in Hyrule, and is well-versed in the workings of the Triforce. He, if anyone, will know what is going on."

Once again, I nodded in response. This time, though, I had nothing more to say. After another forty seconds, I finally produced the spike and drove it into the rock at the top of the cliff, taking great care not to make too much noise. This done, I tied one end of the rope to the spike and let the other end drop. The vast majority of the length went unused, and coiled atop the top of the fortress. I slid down the rope, followed by Zelda, with Impa bringing up the rear.

As Zelda touched down onto the smooth, flat rock of the fortress, I asked her, "Which way is the most likely?"

"This way," she replied, grabbing the rope and dropping it off to our left. We descended to the second level in this manner, myself nervous the whole time, in fear of discovery. Fortunately, none of the patrolling Gerudo looked above or behind them. We slipped through a dark opening in one of the structures and entered the maze of passages of which the fortress was comprised.

We crept along in the shadows and the dim torchlight for what seemed a few lifetimes. Zelda and I often covered our right hands in order to mask the light emitted from them. Once, a guard on the inside came so close to us that I nearly uncovered my hand to pull out my sword. Thankfully, we evaded notice the whole time. We came across several large chambers that held cells. But all of these were empty. This fact filled me with dread; it meant that Link might have been killed already. But whenever I thought such things, my right hand vibrated all the harder, and the fear subsided, though I began to worry each time that it would lead to our discovery and capture. I forced myself not to have any alarming thoughts from that point on.

At length, we began to hear voices at the end of one of the halls we were passing through. There was light coming from around a corner. We stopped short of that light, and crouched behind a wooden crate, listening to hear what the voices would say.

An adult, male voice spoke first: "My attempt to confiscate that meddler's piece of the Triforce has failed. When I willed it to join the Triforce of Power, it left his hand, but I have not seen it since. Not on my hand, not in the Temple, nowhere!"

"Patience, my lord Ganondorf," answered a female voice. "The Triforce of Courage will turn up. Perhaps it will be dropped into our laps willingly." I stiffened at the thought, but this voice continued: "Once you have it, Queen Zelda should be easy enough to capture and the Triforce of Wisdom will be won."

"You're a queen now?" I whispered to Zelda.

She nodded, putting a finger to her mask where her lips would have been. I shut up and continued to listen.

The first voice was back. "Very well," it said. "With any luck, the Triforce of Courage has not wandered far. In the meantime, our so-called Hero of Time should be transferred here from the Temple of Spirit. Organize a party tomorrow morning to collect him from there and bring him here."

The second voice emitted a low laugh. "Of course," it came. "Once he is here, the Hero of Time will add more warriors to our ranks, as one day all men in Hyrule will."

Zelda swore under her breath, and I came close to doing the same. The second voice's words hid nothing of the intentions of the Gerudo people towards Link. The thought of him meeting such a fate made my pulse and anger rise. I began to reach for my sword, but Zelda put a hand on my arm to stop me.

And then we heard the first voice say, "The Triforce. It is resonating. A bearer of it must be near." We stopped cold at that. I realized that I had uncovered my right hand, as had Zelda, and the Triforce symbols were blazing furiously. We were now in very real danger of being caught and captured. Link wasn't even held here, which meant there was no point to us staying, and to do so would put us more at risk.

"Time to go," I whispered, grabbing Zelda's wrist and stealthily booking it for a different passageway. The three of us – I, Zelda, and Impa – hurried along one corridor after another, all of us tensed and ready to be ambushed at any moment. We had gone from being the hunters to being the hunted. It was not a feeling I particularly enjoyed.

Not too long after we left the area of Ganondorf's chamber, we heard a horn sounding throughout the valley. An alarm, I was willing to bet. Gerudo fighters began to jog along the passageways, often coming too close to us for comfort. Once, we blundered into a guard coming around a corner. She and I were just as surprised to have run into each other, but I managed to get my hand on my weapon more quickly. I pounced and hammered the butt end of the sword into her forehead, sending her into unconsciousness.

She was the only guard who saw us, thankfully. After I'd switched places in our file with Zelda, we managed to navigate to the opening next to which our rope dangled. Letting all caution leave us, we all leapt up the rope in quick succession, climbing furiously to the top of the second level, then the top of the third, then the top of the fourth. As we made our way to the top of the plateau, a lone Gerudo spotted us and shot futilely at us with a short recurve bow. All three of us made it to the top, the Triforces on our hands outshining the sun, after which I gathered our rope and spike, and we took off across the plateau, bound for the familiar grassy plains.


	10. Chapter 10

"So what do we do now?" Zelda asked as we jogged across the plains towards the welcoming sight of the ranch.

The thought of rescuing Link returned to my mind after ten minutes of thinking about nothing but escape. The sun was still high in the sky, though it was obviously well on its way to the western horizon. It would be just starting to set by the time we made it back to safety. I realized we didn't have much time before Link was to be fetched from the Temple of Spirit, wherever and whatever the heck that was, and brought to the fortress we had just escaped from. I would have to come up with a plan quickly; in fact, we would have barely any time to make preparations once we arrived at the ranch.

Immediately, I thought of ambushing the enemy party tasked with transferring him. If I and a small group of archers could get into the desert before the transfer party, we could overwhelm them, then get Link out of his current place of imprisonment. We'd have to gather troops fast, and move faster, but it could work.

Finally, we got to the ranch. As we jogged through the gate, I immediately told Zelda. "Do you have archers stationed here?"

"We've got something better," Impa replied. "Crossbowmen."

That was nice to hear. A man with a crossbow would be more likely to hit his target than a man with a more conventional bow. It took less training, and, if given as much training as a normal archer, a crossbowman could be a lethal asset.

After only a few seconds of thought, I asked Impa, "Can you scramble a company of crossbowmen?"

She nodded, and ran to one of the training areas. One of the first people I spotted on the training ground was Nabooru, carrying a pair of curved wooden swords and demonstrating her tactics to a group of soldiers. I watched as she demonstrated the whirlwind of sweeping strikes that – as I had already found out – characterized her fighting style. After her demonstration was finished, I waved to her. She waved back and walked over as the soldiers began to practice various defensive stances.

Once she got to me, I asked, "What do you know of a place called the Temple of Spirit?"

Nabooru's eyes widened. "That's a place I know quite well. It was built by my ancestors many ages ago. I used to go treasure-hunting there. That's also where I met Link. Is that where he's being held?"

"Not for long," I replied. "They're going to move him from there to their fortress tomorrow morning. I was wondering if you could guide us to the temple."

She nodded. "That I _can_ do," she answered in emphasis.

"Excellent," I said with a tense smile.

At that moment, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Zelda behind me, once again in her dress. "We need to talk to Rauru," she told me, so I followed her to the building in which I had discussed my original rescue plan the day before. There was Rauru, looking as calm and magnificent as ever. "I have heard you have something interesting on your hand," he said to me.

Reluctantly, I showed him the back of my right hand, with its Triforce symbol glowing faintly now. His eyes widened slightly as he studied it. "You say Link is still alive?" he asked.

I nodded to this, setting him deep in thought. "Very interesting," he said at length. "Nothing like this has ever happened since our people descended to this land and the Triforce was created. However, I believe I may have an explanation based on my research into its inner mysteries."

He paused, as if he didn't wish to go on without my approval. My eyes widened, hoping he'd take the cue.

Thankfully, he did. "Anyways," he explained, "Experience has taught me that while the full Triforce cannot distinguish between right and wrong, parts of it were created with a defense mechanism to protect it from misuse. You see, when Ganon made his first attempt on the Triforce and succeeded in bringing all three pieces together, it seemed to sense the imbalance in his character and split into its three components – Power, Wisdom, and Courage. The fact that the Triforce of Power rested with Ganon – not to mention the fact that it has returned to his hand – shows that that particular piece does not distinguish right from wrong. Given the nature of the very idea of power, this makes sense, as common ethics are often the antithesis of power. As for Wisdom and Courage, they are more selective of their bearers; once again, quite sensibly, as the ideas of wisdom and courage stem from the belief in a code of honor that governs our actions. What may have caused the Triforce of Courage to transfer itself from Link's hand to yours may be another defense mechanism preventing its misuse. It saw that it was about to be taken by someone who would misuse it, and sought out a different, but no less courageous, bearer."

As Rauru finished his explanation, Zelda looked at me and said, "You and Link are more alike than I thought."

I was not comforted by either of their words. Zelda's, in particular, were disconcerting. Her likening of me to Link felt like a life sentence to stay in Hyrule. If the only way I could get rid of the Triforce of Courage was to intend to misuse it, then there was no way I would ever be able to get home, since I would never have any intention to misuse anything in this land.

The way home was now shut.

As I teetered on the edge of breaking down into a despondent wreck, Impa came in, causing us all to snap back to reality. "The crossbowmen are ready," she said. "Nabooru is prepared to set off with us. Ruto has also asked to come along. Shall we proceed to the desert?"

Forcing myself to tear my mind away from my desperation, I looked at her, then at Zelda.

"Let's do it," I said.


	11. Chapter 11

It was nighttime when Zelda, Impa, Ruto, Nabooru, and I – along with twenty or so crossbowmen, entered the narrow valley. The high walls of the plateau rose darkly on either side of us, causing every sound in the night to echo throughout. We were all careful to tread lightly the whole way through, lest a Gerudo patrol hear us and bring an army down on top of us. Though we were definitely vulnerable, I felt safe within our cluster of people. After all, we had twenty soldiers with crossbows and swords at our backs, Nabooru, Impa, and – apparently – Zelda were all accomplished fighters in their own right, and I would be able to stand up for myself in a fight. Even Ruto, who, as far as I knew, was not a fighter, wore a sword and shield at her back. Though these were supposed to be given to Link once we broke him out of the Temple of Spirit, they would also (hopefully) keep her safe on the way there.

We reached the area around the fortress within two hours. This was the scariest part of the trip, as I fully expected the Gerudo to be fully alert after our break-in earlier that day. According to Nabooru, there was a narrow track up and over the valley walls which we could use to get around the fortress, though this would be lightly defended. She led the way to this track, and we all made our way onto it, single-file. Nabooru stopped us just before we turned a corner, telling us that a pair of guards would be waiting just around it. Zelda – who was back in her stealth outfit – and Impa crept stealthily around the corner and took the guards out. I never heard a sound until they poked their heads back out again.

So we were able to get around the fortress and over to the desert. This was a large sea of sand, tossed about by a constant breeze. We trudged through the ankle-deep sand for another half-hour until we came to a crudely-maintained wooden footbridge spanning a chasm that cut through the sand, falling to an unknown depth. Nabooru crossed first – to show us it could be done – then Impa, then Zelda, then the twenty crossbowmen, one at a time. I offered to bring up the rear and cover Ruto against anyone following us, but she wouldn't move. The drop likely frightened her, and the seeming instability of the bridge. At length, I finally told her, "If you want to see your husband, climb on my back and hold on."

After she agreed to this, I carried her across the bridge to the waiting troops; it took a while, as I was concerned about stepping on a loose or rotten plank, particularly as I was carrying someone on my back. Once across, Nabooru found a spot where the sand rose in a low dune. It would provide exactly the sort of cover we would need for an ambush. So we scrambled over to the reverse slope of the dune and rested for the remainder of the night.

…

Morning brought with it, of course, a great deal of heat. It was a warm, pleasant heat at first, but it later became more oppressive. Not long after sunrise, Ruto began to constantly shift where she lay, until one of the soldiers took of his cloak and wrapped her in it. The rest of us weren't bothered so much by the sand and the heat.

Around ten-thirty, Nabooru quietly called out, "Here they come!" We all moved to the crest of the dune – except for Ruto – and looked out. There was a party of ten Gerudo crossing the bridge. I shook my head. Even after our break-in, they weren't sending a large force to guard the transfer of their prize. Ganon was either overconfident in our supposed inability to strike in the desert, or was reluctant to have so many troops leave his fortress; I wasn't sure which.

They soon were walking at the foot of our dune. I waited for them to nearly pass our entire firing line. Then I pulled out my sword and whistled once – the signal to begin firing.

Our crossbowmen showed their heads over the crest of the dune and fired as one into the Gerudo ranks. Seven dropped to the sand, either dead or grievously wounded. The three survivors pulled out their scimitars and attempted to rush the crossbowmen, taking advantage of their crossbows' slow reload time.

They never got to the crossbowmen, for Nabooru, Impa, and I charged down on them. Impa's opponent was dead before they even came in contact, a small knife in her throat. Nabooru quickly overwhelmed hers with her characteristic baffling swordplay. My opponent didn't go down so easily. I managed to send her rolling down the dune simply by charging into her, shield-first. But I didn't reach her until she'd gotten back up. We dueled for a good minute in the growing heat, myself only just managing to keep up with her, before I abandoned caution and slammed into her shield-first again. As she went down, I slashed at her. The cut connected just behind her left knee. As she lay there, I decided against ending her life. Though she would likely survive the injury, her leg was obviously too badly damaged for her to go anywhere in this desert.

The rest of the troops had joined us. Zelda found a ring of keys on one of the enemy troops. This we took, before setting off once again – Impa carrying Ruto on her back.

It took another half-hour of following Nabooru across the desert until we arrived at a huge monolith standing in the middle of a basin in the desert. Into the great rock was carved the image of a woman with a serpent around her shoulders, holding both hands out as if in welcome.

Nabooru turned to us and pointed at the monument. "The Temple of Spirit is inside this rock," she said, leading the way into the basin, under a solitary megalithic doorway – almost like the formations at Stonehenge – and across a half-buried patio into the Temple.

The main chamber was of awe-inspiring size, much like the monument outside the door. It was built in two tiers. A wide stairway lead from one tier to the second, and another stone image of the same woman stood at the back of the upper tier.

And, held suspended by all four limbs by taut chains leading to the ceiling and floor in front of this image, was a teenager. Not a stone one, but a young man (the pointy-eared variant, at least), clad in a green tunic, white tights, and soft leather boots. A floppy green felt hat lay nearby. The boy reminded me of myself in his appearance, with the same blond hair and barely-tanned complexion. I couldn't see his face, as he was faced away from us, towards the stone image. But Zelda recognized him immediately.

The gasp she let out told me all I needed to know.

This was Link.


	12. Chapter 12

I was taken off guard seeing Link, the Hero of Time, in chains. Even though I knew he'd been captured, it was still a shock to see the young man I'd seen so often tearing through enemies in video games in a state such as this. Zelda instantaneously reacted, rushing over to his side, pulling out the ring of keys. As she fumbled with it, I heard a young male voice – it could be no one else's but Link's – say, in an injured mumble, "Ze…Shiek?"

I was puzzled both by his hesitation, and the name he called Zelda. I walked over, hoping to see what was affecting him. To my shock, I saw that he had been beaten quite soundly, perhaps multiple times. The front of his tunic was torn nearly to shreds, and long, heavy red welts crisscrossed his chest and abdomen. There were a few scabbed-over cuts on his face, and there was a black-and-blue ring around one of his sky-blue eyes – his left eye.

Ruto, Impa, and Nabooru had run up after I had, and the five of us stood there shocked for a moment. Then Zelda removed her cap and mask, before unlocking the chains that held Link's ankles. As she began to unlock the chain around his left wrist, he said, in a more coherent voice, "Zelda, you have to get out of here. He has it. He has the Triforce of Courage."

"Actually, he doesn't," I said in return, stepping into his field of view. I showed him the back of my right hand. The Triforce symbol on it was glowing and pulsating from proximity to Zelda's Triforce.

His eyes went wide as he saw this, and he turned back to Zelda, asking, "Who is this?"

"This is Brian Glenn," Zelda replied, finishing up the first wrist chain. "He has been instrumental for us in rescuing you." Then she unlocked the last wrist chain. Link dropped six inches to the floor. Staying on his feet, however, seemed to be too hard a task for his legs, and he collapsed backwards. Ruto stepped in and caught him, gently letting him down, and sitting on the floor herself, one arm wrapped around his shoulders, her other hand pillowing his skull.

Neither of them said a word, but Link reached up with both arms and returned the embrace he was given. He and his bride sat there in each other's arms for a good minute. I could see Link was making no effort to hold back tears – Ruto's shoulder was wet with them.

Ruto helped him up after a while, and Zelda and Impa, by turns, gave him a hug of their own. He then let go of Ruto and tried to stand on his own – successfully – before offering Nabooru and shake of the hand. Nabooru – the tough warrior type as she was – rejected this in favor of another embrace.

And then he looked at me, offering a handshake. I readily accepted this, glad to finally meet the hero I had been sent here to rescue. It was as we shook hands that I realized just how short Link was. He exceeded five feet by maybe an inch or two; Zelda and I both dwarfed him (Impa and Nabooru even more so), and even Ruto was a bit taller than him as well. But as I looked Link in the eye, I saw the gaze of someone who had known struggle and prevailed. His small stature made him no less a hero.

It was then that Impa broke in. "We'd better head back. Ganon may wonder why his transfer party has not returned with Link yet."

As we began to exit the Temple of Spirit, Link asked, "Transfer party? What else were they planning to do to me?"

I, who was supporting him as he tried to walk, was reluctant to answer. Zelda did so, though: "Let's just say that you would've had a lot of kids, and none of them would've looked like Ruto."

Link blanched. Then he nearly collapsed. I immediately picked him up and started to fireman-carry him up the slopes of the temple basin.

…

Link was ambulatory again when we reached the plains. He appeared to be recuperating well on the march, as he walked hand-in-hand with Ruto. As we crossed the plain, Impa and I both kept looking over our shoulders to make sure there were no Gerudo coming out of the valley after us. Thankfully, none appeared; Ganon either wasn't missing Link yet, or he thought Link was still in the desert.

We arrived back at the ranch just as the sun was setting; we'd been on the mission for a full twenty-four hours. The first person to meet us as we stepped through the gate was Malon, who ran up to Link and gave him the biggest bear hug I had ever seen anyone in Hyrule give.

Her record was quickly broken as Darunia came rolling up and, to all of our wincing, wrapped Link up in a bone-crushing embrace; I could actually hear the wind being pushed out of Link's lungs and several of his vertebrae popping loudly.

We heard Saria before we saw her. "Link!" she shouted, running up as fast as her small child legs could carry her. She jumped into the air, and Link caught her in his arms; they were both laughing for joy.

Zelda, who was standing next to me, leaned over and whispered, "Those two have been best friends since Link was a child. He grew up among the Kokiri."

The last to appear was Rauru. Link smiled brightly as he saw him walk over, dignified and fatherly as always. I almost thought they _were_ father and son, the way Link ran up and hugged him.

There was not a single blank look in the whole gathering – even Impa, who was always calm and unfazed, was chuckling heartily with the rest of us. Zelda and Ruto looked the most relieved out of all of us, though. And that, I reasoned, was perfectly logical; Zelda because her hero and comrade was free, and Ruto because her husband was with her again.

At length, Link turned to all of us and said, "Well, as we probably all know, Ganon is back. He's after the  
Triforce, as usual, so we'll need to put an end to his evil once and for all."

Caught up in the moment, I drew my sword and raised it aloft. "Let's do it!" I called out. Those who had gathered there nodded in assent, and Darunia punched his palm with his fist.

"You know what this means, though, don't you Link?" called Rauru from slightly behind Link.

We all looked at him to see what he was going to say next.

He looked at Link and said, "You'll need the Blade of Evil's Bane. You need to take up the Master Sword."


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning, Link and I reported to the horse pen just before sunrise. Malon was already there, and she gave Link a sisterly embrace when we arrived. After they separated, Link whistled a descending three-note sequence twice. In an instant, a reddish-brown mare with a grey mane came trotting up to the fence. Link began stroking the horse's muzzle, to her contented whiffling. Malon looked at Link with the horse and told him, "Epona has been waiting for you for a while."

Then she looked over at me. "You'll need a horse for the ride back to Castle Town too." She whistled a repetitive ascending sequence of three notes. In response, a sandy-brown stallion galloped over.

Link looked up at the whistle. "You trained him to respond to Saria's song?" he asked.

Malon nodded, then gestured for me to call the stallion. I echoed her whistle, and was rewarded by the horse trotting about five feet over to me. He butted my arm, and I started to stroke his muzzle and run my fingers through his mane. "He is called Dagda," Malon told me. "He and Epona were fathered by the same stallion through different mares in the same year."

Link looked over at her, surprised. "Epona has a brother?" he asked, to which Malon nodded.

Then Malon looked back at me. "You should take him for a ride before you go to Castle Town today," she said.

"Why don't we both take our horses out?" suggested Link. I was quick to nod, climbing over the fence into the horse pen, and copying the way Link mounted Epona as I swung myself onto Dagda.

I had a basic idea of how to guide a horse, and getting Dagda to go where I wanted proved to be simple enough. Link and I trotted our horses around the pen for a few minutes before Link said, "Let's take them on a _real_ ride." Without any other warning, he wheeled Epona around, set her at a gallop, straight at the fence. When they reached it, Epona performed an impressive jump over the wooden barricade.

"How do I get mine to do that?" I called over.

"He'll do it on his own," answered Malon.

So I wheeled Dagda around and spurred him on towards Link. When we got to the fence, I felt Dagda gathering his strength before launching himself over the wooden beams of the fence. I had never felt such a sensation like it before; it felt like jumping on a trampoline, but with a little more raw physical power.

But the real joy came when Link and I spurred our horses towards the gate. Epona and Dagda galloped slowly out the gate, then gained speed on the open plains outside the ranch. The grass blurred beneath us as we rode south, and the crosswind we stirred up gave me a sensation similar to riding my bike at home, but so much faster and higher off the ground. It felt like the closest thing to flying as I could imagine.

After a while, Link and I slowed our horses down to a walk, going side-by-side. I saw that he'd changed into a new, untorn tunic, and he had an alert look to his face that hadn't been there the day before. I had noted then that he looked heroic enough to be real. But now, he looked like the type of hero I could take pride in, one I would follow to death's door.

He took a long look at me and said, "You look a lot like me, you know that?"

My eyes went wide. I had never really thought about that. But he had a point. We had the same hair and eyes, my complexion was only a subtle shade darker than his, and, though he was definitely shorter than me, I could see how any casual onlooker might mistake us for brothers. Then I realized that my time in Hyrule must have shaped my face, given it a sharper, hardened, determined look, and made it akin to Link's own to complete the similarities.

I said nothing – and neither did Link – for a few minutes. We just continued to ride as the sun began to peek over the eaves of the Lost Woods on our left. Then Link found something else to say. "How does it feel to be a hero now?" he asked.

I looked at him, wincing inside at being called a hero, as if it was another condemnation to live the rest of my life in Hyrule. But I said nothing of this. I gave a cursory glance to the Triforce on my hand before replying, "Can't complain. But if it weren't for Zelda or Nabooru, we might not even know where you were. Either that or we'd all be prisoners right now."

Link nodded in acknowledgement, and we continued on in silence for another minute. Finally, I decided to speak up. "Can I ask you a few things?" I inquired.

Smiling, Link replied, "You just did." We had a good chuckle before Link continued, "Sure. Ask away."

Getting over my laugh, I asked him, "Does having a piece of the Triforce keep someone from moving between worlds?"

"I don't really know that," Link replied. "Is there a reason why?"

I shrugged. "Oh, it's just that I came from a different world than this one," I responded. "Zelda and Impa convinced me to come over here to get you out of bondage so you could take down Ganon and all. And then _this_ happened…" I showed him the Triforce on my hand briefly. "…Rauru thinks it was some defense mechanism on the part of the Triforce, and the only way any of us can think of to get rid of it is to intend to misuse it."

Link began to nod slowly. "So you're saying," he asked, "that you want to be able to go home, but you don't want to even _intend_ to misuse the Triforce of Courage?"

I nodded. "Exactly. So I want to know if having this means I have to stay here. Because if I can't leave with this, then I have to either want to misuse it, which isn't going to happen, or let Ganon try to take it again and hope its defense kicks in again."

A corner of Link's mouth went back in thought. At length, he replied, "I don't rightly know if the Triforce of Courage will be able to avoid Ganon twice within a month. Zelda and Rauru know more about it than I do, but I've personally noticed that the Triforce seems to channel some sort of spiritual energy."

"Like a life force or something?" I asked.

"Maybe," answered Link. "But I wonder if this energy doesn't get exhausted when parts of the Triforce get transferred between people. Next time Ganon tries to take it, the Triforce of Courage may not have enough energy stored up to be able to withstand the pull of the Triforce of Power. Your attempt at getting it to return to me may backfire. But who knows – you may be able to return to your world without having to get rid of it."

I sincerely hoped he was right about his last point. We continued riding for a while in silence. When the sun's lower edge had finally cleared the eastern horizon, Link said, "We should probably head back to the ranch. The others will be wondering where we are."

So we turned our horses around. And I rode north at a gallop, side-by-side with the Hero of Time.


	14. Chapter 14

We were on the move again later that morning, but this time Zelda and all the Sages rode with us. At least, most of them did. Darunia did not ride a horse, but instead curled into a ball and rolled alongside us as if he were a boulder. Ruto rode Epona with Link, and sat behind him, with her arms around his waist. Saria and I shared a horse as well. Dagda didn't seem to mind the extra load, and kept pace with Epona the whole way to Castle Town.

We made for a strange-looking group, made all the stranger by the fact that I had dressed in some clean American clothes from my backpack (which was slung on my back, over the sword and shield). As we crossed the drawbridge and into the town, we definitely attracted some stares from the townspeople. We trotted through the broad streets to a large building, almost like a cathedral. I realized I recognized this place. It was the Temple of Time, where I had first arrived in Hyrule. We stopped before this building, dismounted, and all filed in through the open door.

I was treated again to the sight of the great white-marble chamber. At the far side was the dais, with the three gems sitting upon it, and beyond it, an open door to another room. Zelda and Rauru led us through this door.

We entered a smaller chamber, built of a light grey rock and lit by a single, massive window on the far wall. Light from the window fell on a stone pedestal, into which was thrust a single-handed broadsword with an ornate blue hilt and a swept guard resembling a bird's wings. Link stepped up to the pedestal and grasped the hilt. Then he looked back at Rauru. "Will this unleash Ganon's legions?" he asked.

Calmly, Rauru answered, "Yes. But without that blade, he cannot be defeated."

"Just pull it out, Link," I chimed in. "We can handle 'em." One of the few things I already knew from watching Kaylee play _Zelda_ games was that the various monsters Ganon could summon would be no match for any fighter with their wits about them. And we all certainly had our wits about us.

Link smiled at the encouragement and began to pull on the hilt. The sword slid out of the pedestal easily, inexplicably leaving no trace of its former presence in the stone of the pedestal. It was a beautiful weapon, so aesthetically perfect in the shape, length, and breadth of the blade that it almost seemed more like a treasure than a weapon. Certainly, it appeared to live up to its name, the Master Sword.

Link gave it a few experimental swings in the air. Then he looked at Zelda. "There's something I want to see, just as an experiment," he told her. Then, without warning, he tossed the sword straight at me.

With barely any time to react, my hands flew up to intercept the weapon. Before I instinctively closed my eyes and turned my head away, I caught a glimpse of the Triforce symbol on my right hand blazing.

I felt, rather than saw, the impact of the hilt on my right palm. My hand immediately snapped shut around it, in hopes of arresting its progress towards my head. I heard an audible gasp from someone (I'm not sure who it was), alerting me to open my eyes.

When I did, I saw that I was holding the Master Sword, point up, in my right hand. Unsure of what this proved, I slowly described a circle in the air with it. It was perfectly balanced, and to me it seemed to have almost no weight at all. I looked at Link, hoping for some explanation.

But he turned to Zelda and said, "It'll work with him." I looked over at Rauru then; if Link wasn't going to explain anything, Rauru surely would.

He caught the look I gave him and told me, "Only a true hero can wield the Blade of Evil's Bane. If my guess is correct, Link was attempting to ensure you would be able to use it if he were killed or incapacitated."

My eyebrows rose a little at that. "You mean," I asked, "he was trying to see if I could act as a backup hero?"

"You could say that," Link replied.

I nodded a few times, digesting what I'd just been told. Then I looked back at Link and held out the Master Sword. "You want this back?" I asked. "I've already got a sword."

Link nodded, and I lightly tossed him the weapon. He caught it skillfully, and sheathed it in a blue scabbard with elaborate gold trim on his back. He looked so majestic, so determined, so dangerous that I knew, we were going to win.

Then Link said to us, "Come on. Let's go defeat Ganon."

I grinned, as did most of the rest of us. We exited the chamber, crossed the main room of the Temple of Time, and exited the building, bound for our horses.

The moment we stepped out, a loud, sweet horn call split the air, followed by the repeated tolling of a bell. Zelda stopped in her tracks. "The town is under attack," she said, in shock.

We forgot our horses and ran through the streets, passing frightened people fleeing from the walls and towards the lofty citadel of the castle. We found that the gate was closed and the drawbridge was pulled up. I led the way up a stone staircase onto the stone battlement of the walls. Link, Zelda, Impa, and Nabooru followed, then the rest of the Sages.

We looked out over a fearfully awe-inspiring sight. The plain before the walls was swarming with a great host of fearsome-looking goblin-like creatures, carrying a terrifying array of clubs, spears, and bows; some were armored, and others rode upon the backs of massive, armored beasts resembling wild boars. They were bringing up several crude-looking siege towers and battering rams.

Nervously, I looked over at Link. "What are they?" I asked.

Link turned to me, a serious look about him, and replied, "These are some of Ganon's monsters."

Impa, like all of us, was clearly affected by the sight. "We are besieged," she stated.

And the funny thing was that while she was stating something painfully obvious, I wasn't even annoyed.


	15. Chapter 15

As we looked out over the grotesque legion laying siege to Castle Town, soldiers began to gather in the streets adjacent to the wall, replacing the civilians that had previously occupied the space. Many of the soldiers – younger recruits, mostly – gazed in wide-eyed fear of the invading force. There were, however, a large number of soldiers with more composure. I looked at Zelda and asked, "How come so many of the troops aren't afraid? Haven't you had peace all the time?"

Zelda shook her head. "We had a civil war around the time I was born," she replied. "Many of our soldiers are veterans of that war."

Her statement encouraged me quite a bit. I took to quickly surveying the fortifications. As I had observed before, the moat was so narrow as to be a non-factor in this siege; I doubted the enemy siege towers would even have to cross it. But unlike my first observance, I began to feel more confident about how well the walls could hold. They were sturdily constructed, and decently high. A resolute force could hold the walls against all but the most determined attackers.

In short, our chances were pretty good.

Immediately, I swung into action. Turning to Zelda, I said, "You have to evacuate with the rest of the civilians. Take all the Sages with you who aren't fighters. I'd ask Link to go with you, but I have a feeling he'll stay to hold the walls."

Zelda gave me a half-grin in return, responding, "I'm capable of handling myself in battle."

It was Impa who spoke next: "You are also a high-value target. If those hordes get over these walls, many will attack you."

I continued, finishing for Impa, "Besides, the Sages and the civilians will need someone who can fight covering their backs.

"I'll need someone else with me," Zelda said.

Impa put her hand on Zelda's shoulder. "I will go with you."

Zelda finally nodded her agreement, and the two of them led most of the Sages, save for Nabooru and Darunia, back through the streets. I didn't watch them go, however, as I was already setting down my backpack and shrugging the shield off my back and onto my arm. I called down to the waiting soldiers, "I need all crossbowmen and archers on the walls! Make sure your close-combat weapons are ready!"

I could see, in my periphery, Link looking very approvingly at me. I dashed over to him and said to him, "I need to get the veteran swordsmen right next to the walls, and the newer guys behind them."

Link nodded, then hollered out, "Veteran men-at-arms form up inside the wall! Recruits behind them!"

Immediately, every soldier in that area sprang into action. The defenses were shaping up quite well. From the elevated position on the battlement, I could see that the same pattern was being followed all along the wall, even by troops who couldn't possibly have heard us. Then I looked back at Link. "Are there elite soldiers or cavalry here?" I asked.

"Both at once," he replied. "Hylian knights."

I was certainly glad to hear this. Most of these knights, I imagined, would be war veterans and highly-trained warriors to a man. "I want you to form them into a reserve and lead them," I told Link. "If you hear a horn, get them charging."

Link nodded, and leapt down the stairs from the battlement. I called over to Darunia, "You go with Link!" The animate stony mass nodded, and rolled after Link. Nabooru and I were left on the wall, alongside those soldiers who carried bows or crossbows. "Shall we hold the walls?" I called over.

Nabooru did not respond, aside from a savage grin. In a moment, her twin scimitars came sliding out of their scabbards. I pulled out the long, straight sword I'd had since day one of my incredible journey. I ran across the battlement to the opposite side of the gatehouse from Nabooru. I shouted to the troops there, "Aim for their leaders!"

Elsewhere on the wall, I could hear Nabooru shouting the command to fire. As one, the archers and crossbowmen let loose a volley of missiles into the enemy lines.

Dozens of the uncouth warriors dropped to the ground with arrows or crossbow bolts protruding from their bodies. Two of the massive wild-boar creatures had been relieved of their riders, but there was one boar rider, clad in plate armor as decorative as could be expected from that ugly metalwork, who remained unhurt, He unsheathed a massive, crooked sword, and bellowed out an indecipherable command. The entire mass of enemies began to advance on the walls.

The troops on the walls let loose volley after volley of projectiles into the ranks of these insidious beings, causing horrific casualties that could not be answered by the feeble bows of the attackers. But their numbers were not thinning quickly enough, and they never slowed down. Before I knew it, the bravest among them already had a tree trunk at the drawbridge, and were swinging it against the wooden portal.

As if to add to my concerns, the siege towers arrived at the walls not long afterward. I immediately hollered to the ranged troops beside me, "Get off the walls! Get on the ground and prepare to fire when they get up here!" The archers and crossbowmen on my side of the gatehouse did as bidden. Nabooru hadn't given the same order to the soldiers under her command, so they remained on the walls, firing quickly and desperately. Some even pulled out their swords. Desperately, I hoped the archers on that side could handle their blades well. Even more desperately, I hoped _I_ could handle my own blade well enough to hold the enemy on the wall. A few crossbowmen, braver or slower than the rest, took up positions beside me, their own swords coming out.

It was right then when every siege tower along the walls let down the platforms atop them, and great numbers of the Goblin-like abominations poured onto the walls. I called out for those archers and crossbowmen who had made it to the ground to fire up at the enemy on the walls. As the first several enemies across the platforms were shot to pieces in front of me, those who followed immediately rushed in. All of these terrors came charging across the battlement, straight for me and the little knot of crossbowmen around me.

Another volley tore into the attackers nearest to me. And then, we made contact.


	16. Chapter 16

The first enemy to reach me was armed merely with a thick wooden club. The creature could only come close to killing me if it managed to connect with my head, and, short of stature as it was, that wasn't likely. With total confidence, I kicked the freakish being in the head. It careened backwards, knocking over a few of its comrades before dropping to the battlement and lying motionless (I suspect I'd caved its skull).

I hadn't the time to watch the creature die, though, for another five of them were leaping on me and the crossbowmen near me. We each killed one with our swords. Another volley of arrows and bolts shredded the individuals behind them. One, armed with a bow, shot back, but its arrow glanced off a helmet. As another group of the frightening beings advanced on us, I looked at my comrades on the wall. All of us still lived, though one of the crossbowmen had a gash on his hand. As our swords tore through the ugly bodies of our adversaries, I marveled at just how foolish they were to attack Castle Town, poorly armed as they were. It seemed as though Link, Nabooru, and I were the only ones that had anything to fear from them, unarmored as we were.

During another short break, courtesy of another volley of arrows, I looked over and saw that Nabooru and her entire force of crossbowmen were faring just as well, though the troops with their bows and crossbows were falling back off the walls. And Nabooru, her twin swords like wheels of fire, was scything neatly through any enemy that crossed the platform of their siege tower. At other points to the right of my position, the enemy were descending the staircases to the ground below, interrupted by whistling volleys of arrows.

A stone-tipped arrow whizzed by my ear. I snapped back to reality, and saw that one of the four soldiers next to me had gone down with an arrow to the face. The enemy were charging towards me and my now-reduced rearguard again. The one which had just fired was preparing another arrow. I quickly cut through five of its companions before it fired again, this time at me.

I raised my shield with time to spare, and heard it bounce off the solid metal. Then I used the shield to slam one of the diminutive creatures aside. It flew into a crenellation on the battlement with such force as to (probably) kill it. Another of the impish monsters sidestepped one of my sword swings and, with the crude spear it carried, lunged at another soldier beside me. The stone tip, surprisingly, punched through his armor, and pierced the flesh underneath. The monster didn't have long to savor its victory, though, for almost at the same moment, the soldier next to the one it had killed stepped it and beheaded it.

After another volley, I called to the two remaining crossbowmen, "Let's get off this wall!"

We rushed to the stone staircase ahead of more enemies. I looked back and saw that Nabooru, now alone on the wall, was actually advancing onto the platform of a siege tower, and that those enemies facing her were fleeing in terror. The Gerudo immediately left the tower and rushed to intercept the fierce creatures pursuing us. Her scimitars speedily ended the lives of any enemy which dared to approach her. When another volley gave her a rest, she followed us down the stairs. We had joined the veterans on the ground when the wooden drawbridge was shattered by the enemy battering ram. A horde of the goblin-like enemy swarmed through the gate, and charged headlong at us, even as they were mown down from the sides by arrows.

I hung back as the older men-at-arms charged to meet the enemy, their swords hacking through them. I shouted to the younger troops, "They can be killed! Do not be afraid! Let's go!"

The encouragement worked, and the recruits charged in, and I with them, mingling with the veterans who were already fighting. Their added momentum began to push the swarming enemy back from the gates.

A moment later, one of the massive, armored boar-like horrors charged through the gate. Mounted on it was the leader of this awful host. He (I guess) charged straight through his own soldiers until he reached our battle line. Soldiers were scattered and tossed about like bowling pins. With our formation broken, hundreds more small nightmares came pouring in. Worse, some of these began to charge at our archers. Hylian soldiers were beginning to fall to their crude weapons. I was hard-pressed to defend myself as three of them attacked me at once. As I finished off the last of them, I tripped and fell over a dead soldier. I could see Nabooru fighting on, not even close to being overwhelmed. But I was on the ground, my sword several feet away, with another one of the enemy closing in on me. Right then, I noticed that the soldier I had tripped over had a horn in his lifeless hand. Rolling to avoid the spear that came at me, I grabbed this horn and blew a long, ear-splitting blast on it. I managed then to deflect the next spear thrust with my shield, before kicking its wielder back.

Only to see the armor-clad enemy leader slowly approaching me on his boar. I scrabbled for my sword, though I knew full well that he could kill me in so many ways, whether by his sword, or by the tusks of his beast of burden.

But the leader suddenly jerked and toppled off his mount, an arrow in the back of his neck. A large, sandstone-colored mass rolled into the boar, then uncurled. Darunia lifted the creature high over its head and hurled it back. It crashed into the inside of the wall.

Then what seemed a herd of horses rushed past me. I looked up and saw Link, mounted on Epona, at the head of a company of knights, encased in armor. The knights slammed into the sea of monsters, scattering them and slicing into their formation. Those creatures that remained broke and fled, leaving Castle Town. At other points in the city, those abominations hadn't stood a chance; it was only here where they had a prayer of victory. Now that this was ruined, they ran away.

I began to realize that, despite their obvious advantage in numbers, we had beaten them quite soundly.


	17. Chapter 17

It was another fifteen minutes before the first of the civilian evacuees reappeared in Castle Town. These were led by Zelda and the Sages, who had been the last to enter the narrow evacuation tunnel in the courtyard of the castle, and so were fated to be the first back out. Zelda and Impa looked over the carnage that had been wrought in the city. Impa distastefully nudged a fallen enemy with her toe. "Bulblins," she said to herself. "It doesn't look like they were a match for us."

"Not much of one," I replied. "Though they gave us a run for our money once their king charged in. But luckily, we had Link and Darunia in reserve with the knights. They changed it for us, at least here. I don't think they had any chance of breaking through anywhere else."

Impa nodded her approval. "Now that the Master Sword has been removed from its place in the Temple of Time, there will certainly be more of these foul creatures about. Them, and creatures far worse. We've been lucky, from what it seems."

Link walked over to where we stood talking. "Do you think there have been attacks anywhere else?" he asked.

"Possibly," Impa replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if a force of Ganon's monsters hasn't appeared near Lon-Lon Ranch and laid siege to it."

"In that case," said Link, "we'd better set out for the ranch with what knights we have here. Just in case."

"I would agree with Link's idea," I said. "A heavy cavalry force would be more effective on the open plains outside the ranch than it would in these streets. A force of horse archers would be even better."

"Horse archers?" Impa asked curiously. "We do not train our knights to fire bows, nor do we train our archers to ride. Link is the only Hylian to have ever fired a bow from horseback. Horse archery is a way of warfare practiced only by the Gerudo. And they were defeated in our civil war."

"Did you catch them in a narrow place?" I asked, to which Impa nodded. "Horse archers are only really effective on open ground. If we had some of them on the plains, we could be unstoppable."

Both Link and Impa let their eyes go wide. The idea had never occurred to either of them, it seemed. But Impa countered, "We have no trained horse archers here."

"Then we'd better start training people. Best to call for volunteers among the populace. There are ownerless horses at the ranch, are there not?"

"Malon owns them all," Link replied. "But I'm sure she'll be able to lend them to help us. There are horses here in Castle Town, and in Kakariko whose owners may be willing to part with them for the duration of this war."

"What's Kakariko?" I asked.

"It's a village just east of here," Impa responded. "It is reached by a narrow valley like the one that leads to the Gerudo territory." That, then, explained the valley I had first seen east of the castle when we'd first marched to the ranch.

I pondered these things for a moment, before saying, "We'd better tell the queen what I have in mind."

"Tell me what?" came a voice behind me. I spun around to see Zelda standing there, hands on her hips, with a wry, playful grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"I'm thinking of forming a company of horse archers to help combat the enemy on the plains. With your permission, I would like to issue a call for volunteers, as well as a call for horses here and in the village east of here."

Zelda nodded thoughtfully. "Nothing you've planned has gone wrong yet," she replied. "We may as well try it and see if it will work."

I smiled and bowed at the hips. "Thank you, Your Highness," I said, which elicited a giggle from Zelda, a chuckle from Link, and an amused grin from Impa.

At length, Link spoke up. "In the meantime, we should take the knights we have here and hurry to Lon-Lon ranch in case they're being attacked like we were."

"That seems smart," Zelda replied. "I will have one of the soldiers here issue the call, and another will ride to Kakariko to issue it there."

"Excellent," I said. "We'd best not waste any time then. Our time of arrival at the ranch could mean the difference between life and death for the people there."

The three standing near me nodded. Link whistled for Epona, who trotted up to him. I whistled the call for Dagda, and, from somewhere in the city, he galloped into the street, stopping abruptly when he came to me. I left him there for a moment while I ran to the battlement of the walls and grabbed my backpack. Then I went and mounted Dagda.

It took another five minutes for the knights to gather around me, Zelda, Link, and the Sages. Then, after Zelda had given instructions to a pair of men-at-arms, we rode out of the broken gate and onto the plain.

With fifty knights behind us, we galloped across the soft, springy grass of the plain. Zelda was in the very front, with Link and I riding on either side of her. Once again, Link and Ruto shared Epona, while Saria managed to hold on to the pommel of Dagda's saddle as I held his reins.

Even at a great distance, we could all tell that the ranch was not under attack, as Castle Town had been. But we came upon a far stranger sight about halfway between the ranch and the castle. Galloping across the plain were a company of mounted Gerudo. A couple hundred more ran behind on foot. I was about to suggest a counter-attack against them when I noticed the horde of monsters, even larger, stranger, and more terrifying than the Bulblins, rushing after them. A pair of Gerudo at the back of the running line stopped and faced these nightmares, swords and glaives in hand. They took care of a few of the onrushing creatures before they were overwhelmed. One young mounted Gerudo seemed to take notice; she stood in her saddle, drew her bow, and fired it backwards. Her arrow actually managed to bring down one of the monsters in the front.

I realized then that these terrors were not in league with Ganon's people. They were hunting them. I turned to Link and said, "Something's wrong. We need to attack those monsters."

Zelda looked at me, as did Link. "And what of the Gerudo?" she asked.

"If they attack us, we'll fight them. But it looks like we may be able to secure ourselves another ally."

Link and Zelda both nodded at this. Finally, Link said, "Let's go."

I smiled, and shouted to the knights behind us, "Our targets are the fell creatures in the back! Let's go!"

And with that, I, Link, Nabooru, and all fifty of the knights broke into a full charge towards the left flank of the attacking monsters. About halfway there, I realized Saria was still in the saddle with me, hanging on for dear life and looking quite nervous. "Don't worry," I whispered to her as I drew my sword. "You're safer on this horse than you are on the ground."

I could feel her nod; her head bumped into my chest a few times. Bracing myself for the sudden impact we'd have, I narrowed my eyes as we drew closer, ever closer to our frightening quarry.

With a great, ringing crash, we made contact. The enemy were taken off guard, and didn't react for the first few seconds as we swept their first several ranks away. Then, as we wheeled to attack their rear files, they turned to face the new threat we posed. But we came on them too fast for them to prepare much of a defensive formation. In no time, what few survivors there were fled towards the western valley in sheer terror of our horses. Deciding not to give chase, we wheeled around.

Zelda and those Sages who hadn't participated in the battle had already rode to meet the large Gerudo force, and Zelda seemed to be in conference with one of their number. Link, the knights, and I rode up to join their conversation.

Just as Link and I got there, Zelda was asking the Gerudo leader, "What exactly happened for Ganon's fell creatures to be pursuing you?"

The Gerudo, who looked to be as old as Nabooru, shook her head sadly and answered, "When you managed to rescue the Hero of Time from bondage, Lord Ganondorf saw it as our failure. When hordes of those fell beasts appeared, he set them on us as punishment. He told us we were no longer worthy to be called his people." A tear fell from her eye as she continued, "He had always strived to give us a better life in your country. He even managed to convince us that trying to take the Triforce would work to this end. But he was only interested in his own goals."

This was a bit of a revelation for me. Ganon, it seemed, was originally a freedom fighter, trying to improve the lot of what now seemed his long-oppressed people, only to turn on them as a rogue sorcerer.

Immediately I said to Zelda, "We need their help, which they can give. They need freedom from oppression, which we can give. I'd suggest we ally with them."

Zelda didn't seem as enthusiastic about this idea as she had about my previous ideas. But presently she relented. "I guess we can arrange a deal," she told the head of the Gerudo.

The scarlet-haired leader smiled. "Then we are at your service," she replied.


	18. Chapter 18

Any soldier watching from the wooden palisade of Lon-Lon Ranch at sunset that evening would have been treated to a truly bizarre sight: Queen Zelda, the Sages, the Hero of Time, and a young man in strange garb, riding at the head of fifty Hylian knights and three hundred Gerudo warriors. As I rode next to Zelda at the head of the column of troops, I looked back and saw that many of the Gerudo were tense upon approaching the ranch. But no challenge came from within. It was plain to the sentries that these Gerudo were under our protection, allies rather than adversaries. It took three minutes for the whole force to make its way through the gates.

When they arrived, the Gerudo chose not to sleep in any of the barrack buildings, though many of them were completely empty. Half of them had brought, rolled up and strapped to their backs, small canvas shelters, only as long as they were tall, as wide as two of them put together, and just barely tall enough to crawl into. These were pitched in what had, up to that point, been the training area; each shelter was shared by two warriors each, a tight space, but functional.

The fact that the ranch could hold so many newcomers (besides those that already were stationed there), as well as all of their horses, proved just how much grander it was than it seemed in the video game in which it appeared, much like the rest of this charmed land. Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that I had brought a camera with me. Such things were well worth taking pictures of and showing to Kaylee when all of this was over.

It was then that my hand brushed against a pocket of my shorts. I felt something thick and hard inside. Curiously, I reached in, and pulled out, of all things, my cell phone. The memory came back to me of putting it in my pocket the morning of my departure, almost unconsciously. Though the last time I'd used it to take pictures felt like generations ago, I recalled that it took rather good photos. As soon as I realized this, I turned it on. The screen came to life, showing no bars (obviously) but a full battery. I touched the camera icon on the screen, causing that bit of hardware to turn on. Looking around, my gaze passed over Link and Ruto, who were sitting together near the horse pens, saying nothing but enjoying each other's company (they were holding hands, and Ruto's head was resting on Link's shoulder). I quickly snapped a photo of them, before putting my phone back in my pocket; I would have time enough to take pictures later, but for now, I had other matters to attend to.

Near Link and Ruto was the leader of the band of Gerudo. I made my way over to the horse pens, where she was standing, stroking the head and mane of her horse. "That's a fine mount you've got there," I commented as I approached.

She looked at me as I walked over. "She isn't for sale, if that's what you're wondering," she responded.

"I wasn't thinking of buying or taking her," I reassured. "It was just to make conversation."

The Gerudo's expression softened. Then she said, "I saw you before. You were with the Hero of Time. Who exactly are you?"

"I'm Brian Glenn," I answered. "I'm afraid I may also be responsible, in part, for Ganon betraying you." When the lady looked curiously at me, I went on: "I came up with the plans that led to the Hero of Time being rescued."

I had expected to receive a good amount of anger from her at that. But she merely nodded, her face blank. "I would assume you are about to ask something of me," she said at length.

"Your assumption would be correct," was my reply. "I have proposed the idea of creating a force of horse archers within Hyrule's army. I've heard that's something your people excel at. Would you and your people be able to train whatever volunteers come here?"

Her eyes widened. "It isn't often when a Hylian respects our abilities," she answered. "It has been long since we Gerudo have been respected for anything among them."

"Well, I'm not a Hylian either," I told her. "I'm from a land called Oregon. I was brought here specifically to rescue Link, but also to help in the war against Ganon."

After some more thoughtful nodding on her part, the Gerudo said, "It would be a pleasure and an honor to train your recruits."

That got me grinning widely, and I said to her, "Thank you so much…uh…I don't think I caught your name."

"I am Azeru," she replied, holding out her hand.

I took the handshake as gratefully as I had accepted the one Link had offered me when first we'd met. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," I said as we shook hands, eliciting a gracious smile from her.

We talked through the next half-hour of twilight, alternately discussing the Gerudo territory and Oregon. This small talk lasted until the dull pink remnant of the sun's presence in the sky faded, and the sky darkened. With one final nod of gratitude, I parted with her and walked over to the barrack in which I had spent the nights prior to rescuing Link. I found Zelda already there, already fully clad in her nightclothes, and preparing to lie down on one of the beds there. Without a word, I unslung my backpack, sword, and shield next to another bed before removing my boots and clambering into it. Once I was beneath the blankets, I discarded my shirt, socks, and shorts before laying my head on the pillow, blowing out the candle which lay on the rough stand next to the bed, and shutting my eyes.

Sleep came upon me quickly, almost as quickly as it had on my first night in Hyrule.


	19. Chapter 19

Over the next several days, fresh new recruits began trickling steadily in, almost invariably on horseback. They were a mixed bunch, both in origin and in age; one of the first to arrive was a young lad who couldn't have been any older than fifteen years old. Anywhere between ten and twenty newcomers would arrive each day, to be issued with the gear they would be using.

I hadn't really given much thought to what the horse archers would use, besides a horse and a bow. It was Impa, Azeru, and Nabooru who drew up what gear would be issued to the new recruits. This consisted of a short recurve bow, a case of arrows that could be slung over the back, another two arrow cases that were slung over the saddle (according to Nabooru, these saddle-cases were a Gerudo invention), a iron-studded leather cuirass, a simple iron helm – which covered the head, cheeks, and neck in one continuous piece of metal, leaving holes for the Hylians' characteristically long, pointed ears, as well as the entire face uncovered – and the standard purple cloak and broadsword of a Hylian soldier.

With this new equipment came new training for the recruits. They were, of course, taught swordsmanship by a tag-team of Hylian knights and Gerudo. But they also were trained in archery by Azeru and her people. Those who showed an inherent talent for the art quickly graduated to learning how to fire while mounted.

After a week, we had about a hundred and fifty recruits, with more coming in daily. I was mostly busy with my own training. My routine was basically the same as before Link's rescue; I did push-ups and sit-ups, ran laps around the ranch, and practiced my combat skills with the other soldiers. The few times I wasn't training intensely were usually spent taking photos on my cell phone; I did this sparingly, of course, so as not to run down the battery.

Once, I saw Link sitting by himself, watching one of the knights train a group of recruits. I went over and sat by him. After a friendly greeting between us, I asked him, "You want to see something cool?"

He nodded to this, so I took out my phone and turned its camera on. I held it out in front of us and said, "Smile." This Link did, and I got a perfect selfie of the two of us – well, almost perfect; Malon, as we found out afterward, had been walking by and looked at us, trying to figure out what we were doing. But, needless to say, the photo impressed Link.

I continued taking pictures throughout the first two weeks since the first recruits arrived. I figured I would have a great deal to show Kaylee upon my return, on top of all I would have to tell her about this place.

…

On the eighth night since we arrived back at the ranch, I walked into the barrack I slept in, tired from training. Zelda was seated on her bed, writing with a quill in a small, leather-bound book with tan pages. She looked up as I came in. "How is training going, Brian?"

"Fine," I answered, setting my shield down beside my own bed. "How's your day been?"

"Good, just like every other day since Link's been rescued," she replied. Then she went back to writing, somewhat abruptly, which puzzled me. But I didn't think too much of it, as I began to hone my sword with a flat iron.

Zelda didn't continue writing for very long. I heard her quill stop scratching after only twenty seconds. Then came a long silence, broken only by the gentle scrape of the iron going over the edge of my blade. After I noticed this silence (which, admittedly, wasn't until after a good minute and a half had passed), I paused and looked back. She was staring at me, with a rather pensive look about her. My brows went up a bit. "Am I doing this wrong?" I asked.

"Oh, no," Zelda replied, "at least I wouldn't know. I mostly fight with my bare hands anyway. But there's something I have to tell you. I don't think you're going to like it, though."

At this, I began to get concerned. "Is there no way home?" I asked, standing up from the bed and hoping desperately that this wasn't the case.

To my relief, Zelda shook her head, though her warning made me doubtful that whatever she was about to say would be much better. "I have a bit of a dilemma," she said.

"And that is?" I prompted, wishing she'd just gotten straight to the point instead of prefacing it.

I didn't have to wait long before I got it. "My family line has been destined to rule Hyrule since we descended to the land and the kingdom was founded," she explained. "And our family's destiny is such that there will always be, in every generation, a Zelda to bear the Triforce of Wisdom. Since I am the latest of my line, destiny dictates that I am to have a daughter sometime in my life."

I looked quizzically at her. "You sound as though you didn't wish this destiny on yourself," I said. "Surely you can try to change it."

She looked at me, suddenly very serious. "This destiny is for the benefit of Hyrule. If I do not have a daughter, there will be no one to possess the Triforce of Wisdom after my death."

"There might be," I replied. "I mean, it happened with the Triforce of Courage, and Link didn't even die. It could go out of the family, couldn't it?"

Zelda sighed; clearly I was not getting the point. "The Triforce of Wisdom is not like the Triforce of Courage," she told me. "Long ago, before our people descended to Hyrule, a legendary hero helped one of my ancestors to destroy a demon called Demise. In the throes of his death, he placed a curse that his hatred would constantly re-awaken to trouble those in that ancestor's family line, as well as those with the Hero's spirit. The Triforce is inextricably linked with that curse. The Triforce of Courage follows the spirit of the Hero. The Triforce of Wisdom follows the family line of the first Zelda, of which I am the latest. It will have no other bearer. That means, if I am to ensure the Triforce of Wisdom continues to have a bearer, I must find someone's hand to receive."

Gradually, I began to realize what Zelda was about to say. "I'm nervous about where this is going," I said after her explanation.

"Well who else is it going to be? I had my eye on Link, but he was already engaged to Ruto, and they married last year."

"What about one of the knights?" I asked.

"Maybe," she replied. "But for all their courage, there's one thing they don't have, that only two people in Hyrule do. None of them have the spirit of the Hero. Link has it. You have it. Why do you think the Triforce of Courage sought you out when it was fleeing from misuse?"

"I did not ask for this mark on my hand," I countered, showing the glowing Triforce on my hand as I did so.

"Neither did Link," Zelda responded. "The spirit of the Hero goes to whom it chooses. No one asks for it. Just like no one asks to be a Triforce bearer. But still we are. And that binds our fates together. Not every Hero has been wed to one of my ancestors. And not all who follow will marry my descendants. But it is common. And it would be a feat indeed to find someone in Hyrule to match a spirit-bearer for that. You and Link are the only ones in Hyrule."

I was already shaking my head. "I've been here just over two weeks. I don't know you as well as I know my family and friends back home. And I want to return home. I belong there, not here. I have a friend who has so many questions she wanted me to find out the answers to. I'd be failing her if I didn't return and give her those answers." With that, I abruptly sat back on my bed.

There was a few seconds of silence before Zelda said, "You wish now that your friend had been chosen to come with us instead of you, don't you?"

I turned back and gave her a look that was not so much angry as desperate, trying to say, _What do you think?_ In all reality, I was torn. On one hand, Zelda was a kind soul, and friendly, and – I forced myself to admit – she was definitely quite pretty, certainly someone who I knew I would be happy to tie the knot with. But on the other, I had a life elsewhere, one that I had to get back to; I was not made for Hyrule, and binding myself to the blonde queen would force me to stay, unable to return to where I belonged.

She walked over and sat beside me, her hand going to my shoulder. "Don't worry yet," she said. "If you don't want to do this, I will stand by that."

I looked back at her, making eye contact. I had never noticed before, but her eyes were the color of battle-ready steel. One could get lost in their blueness, never to be seen or heard from again. I saw in them that she was speaking truthfully. Giving a little smile, I nodded my thanks to her. She returned the smile, a sweet, sympathetic smile, clapped me on the shoulder, much like a sports coach would do, and went over to the changing room, her nightgown in hand. I immediately blew out my candle and lay down in my own bed.

…

Sleep did not come to me that night. Sometime – I don't know when, but I imagined it might have been 2:00 in the morning – I finally gave up trying to fall asleep. I quietly rolled out of bed and, careful not to wake the gently slumbering Zelda, crept out of the barrack, still fully clothed.


	20. Chapter 20

After leaving the barrack, the first place I went was over to an indoor stable. Almost as soon as I stepped through its door, I sank to the floor and wept bitterly. And why should I not have, for I was faced with an impossible choice. I wanted to go home after Ganon was defeated. I wanted to tell Kaylee all I had found out. I wanted to sleep in my bed at the Onyx House, I wanted to see my family and friends again. And yet, I was forming a close friendship with some of the people here in Hyrule; Link, Zelda, Impa, and Nabooru sprang quickly into my mind. I was beginning to care for the fate of this land, foreign though it may have been. The queen had been plain: Hyrule needed an unbroken line of Zeldas for its own security, and the current Zelda seemed to have interest in me, even if it was a rather forced interest. A part of me did not want to disappoint her.

But then again, what about all the things I held dear on Earth? Was I to simply abandon it all? The two opposing forces waged desperate war inside me, and the straw on the stable floor in no time was damp with the tears of pure stress that trickled out of my eyes.

It was a full ten minutes before I could compose myself enough to get back on my feet. My eyes dry once more, I strode slowly out of the stable and over to the horse pen. I softly whistled the call Malon had taught me, and after a few seconds, I felt Dagda's muzzle butting gently against my shoulder. For a long time, I just stood there, stroking his muzzle, combing his mane with my fingers, and leaning my face against his neck. Finally, I climbed atop the low fence of the pen and slid into Dagda's saddle. I let him walk slowly to the center of the pen, before pointing him towards the gate of the ranch. Then I spurred him on. He raced to the barricade around the pen and leaped high into the air, clearing it easily. From there, I slowed him down to a walk again. He kept up this pace, through the open gates and down the grassy hill.

I walked him in a great spiral around the ranch, going ever outward. My thoughts dwelt ever on the sheer uncertainty of my prospects of going home. Neither part of my mind had yet emerged victorious, and their arguments repeated over and over again like a torturous song on loop. Once, I even bent my head over Dagda's neck and prayed softly, but desperately. It occurred to me that I had not once done this since my arrival in Hyrule, not even when the Bulblin warlord was poised to strike me down. It was funny, I thought briefly, how homesickness could move me to prayer even when impending death had not.

Not long after, a melody popped into my brain. At first, I could not place it. Then I started to hum it to myself. The tune was familiar; this was not one I had heard in any of Kaylee's _Zelda_ games, nor was it anything I had heard in Hyrule. And just then (I was a good mile from the ranch palisade by now), words formed in my head. I began to sing softly:

" _When peace like a river attendeth my way,_

 _When sorrows like sea billows roll,_

 _Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say:_

 _It is well, it is well with my soul._ "

And instantly, I recognized why that melody was so familiar. It was a hymn from back home. I recalled it was one of my dad's favorites, and it was periodically sung in my old church in southwest Portland.

It was then when I realized the significance of those words. " _Whatever my lot_ … _it is well with my soul_ ," I said to myself. Certainly it had to be a message. A divine message. And it was glaringly obvious what it was telling me.

For the first time since my conversation with Zelda, I smiled. There was no more fighting in my brain. There certainly was no victor yet, but the two striving parts of my mind had stilled for the moment. I began to think things out logically. If I was to return home, Zelda could likely cause part of my spirit to be left in Hyrule and be wedded to her if she wished. And if I was to stay in Hyrule, without a divided spirit, I could probably still convince Zelda to allow me to visit my home (certainly not an ideal situation, but leaps and bounds better than what my irrational mind had previously tried to warn me). Whatever my lot, I could still satisfy my two seemingly conflicting loyalties. That definitely felt well with my soul.

It was now about three-thirty in the morning by my reckoning, and the ranch was on my right. Dagda and I were facing south. In somewhat higher spirits now, I spurred Dagda on, past the ranch, streaking southwards. I smiled with closed eyes as I breathed in the crisp, free air that blew against our progress. For a moment, I imagined I was riding around the U of O campus on my bike at night, perhaps to the Knight Library to run some last-second copies, as I figured I was bound to do during my school year. Or maybe to the Onyx House from a late-night workout at the Athletics Center. The feeling was quite liberating, and slightly intoxicating as well. As I opened my eyes, the green grass flew beneath Dagda's feet once more. Feeling at ease once more, I checked him gradually and got him turned back towards the ranch, which was now quite distant, but still looming large and dark before me. Dagda seemed to sense my aim and took off like an arrow, with nearly no prompting from me.

I re-entered the ranch around four in the morning and slowed Dagda to a gallop, before he leapt the fence into the horse pen, whereupon I checked him one last time and dismounted.

I soon found myself re-entering my barrack. Zelda was still sleeping peacefully in her own bed, about six feet from mine. Quietly, I removed my boots and climbed back into my bed. With my conflicting loyalties holding a truce, I slipped more easily into the realm of dreams and sleep.

...

 **I feel I must add another author's note at the end of this, my twentieth chapter. First of all, I'm unsure whether the song I quoted is free from copyright yet, but I will still cite it anyway:** ** _It is Well With My Soul_** **was penned by Horatio G. Spafford (who wrote the lyrics) and Philip Bliss (who wrote the tune). Secondly, I know some readers may wonder where the name "Dagda" came from. It is the name of an ancient Celtic deity; I assigned that name to Brian's horse in keeping with the theme Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto set in naming horses in the** ** _Zelda_** **games ("Epona" is also the name of an ancient Celtic Deity). Obviously, I do not follow the old Celtic religion, as my readers may have guessed by now. Next, I have not yet decided on Brian's fate once this is all over, and I am still quite divided over the possibility of pairing Zelda and Brian. And finally, I must express my continuing gratitude toward my fellow fan fiction author who calls herself the "Fried Cucco Lady." Many thanks for your continued reviews! And thank you all, my dear readers, for bearing with this note.**


	21. Chapter 21

I awoke the next morning a while after the sun rose. I turned over a few times in bed, still drowsy. After about five minutes, I heard the barrack door open and someone walk in. I turned over to see Zelda walking over to her own bed. There was a catch in her step as she saw me with my eyes open. "You're a bit of a sleepyhead today," she said innocently. "Link sleeps in a lot too."

I smiled tiredly. "Had a heck of a time getting to sleep last night," I replied, my voice gravelly with fatigue. "I finally got to sleep after a couple hours of riding around the ranch."

Zelda's brows shot up. "By chance, it wasn't our conversation last night that kept you awake, was it?"

I nodded. "I've gotten over the shock. You may be right about destiny. I guess I'll just have to see what mine is."

She smiled. Then she started rummaging through her saddle pack for something. She found whatever it was just as I was slowly raising myself out of bed. Then I realized, with some panic, that I was clothed only in my underwear. I hurriedly covered myself with the blankets again, my face going as red as a stop sign. I heard Zelda laughing nearby – not a flirtatious giggle, but a genuinely amused bout of laughter – as I rolled to the other side of the bed and began to grab clothes for the day. I dressed under the covers while Zelda took some time to get over her laughter.

Finally, I rose again from the bed, fully garbed. Zelda's laughter was finally winding down, but I stood there for a second, before striking a pose and saying, "Ta-da!"

That got her laughing even harder, and I joined in. She walked over and put an arm around me, clapping me on the shoulder as she laughed. I did the same, and we had our laugh together, leaning drunkenly on each other.

Once we got over our laughter, I said, "I might as well head out and do some training. Maybe I'll feel more awake then."

Zelda cracked a grin at that. We parted and I left the barrack. As I walked into the training ground, I could see some of our new recruits were going through archery training. One young soldier – I suspected he was around fifteen years old – was having his stance corrected by a young Gerudo warrior. As I watched, I realized this was the girl who I had noticed firing that Parthian shot into pursuing monsters a little over a week before.

The girl pressed her palm on her charge's stomach, forcing him to pull it in. Then she went around behind him and pulled on his shoulders, which caused him to pull his shoulder blades back. The recruit froze afterwards and looked at his trainer, who still had her hands on his shoulders.

I cracked a grin from afar. Most militaries would have frowned at a budding trainer-trainee relationship, but I decided not to intervene. After all, the success of these horse archers would depend partially on building a rapport between the Hylian recruits and their Gerudo instructors, despite any ancient enmity they may have had for each other. Military professionalism could wait another day; I could see that this particular pair were beginning to warm up to each other, and any resulting relationship would only strengthen the comradeship between their two peoples.

I looked away and found one of the knights sitting alone, a pair of wooden swords in his hand. I walked over to him. He looked up, tossed me one of the wooden weapons, and we faced off for a sparring session.

…

As I went on with my training for that day, I began to notice how much my endurance had been increasing since I'd arrived in Hyrule, and particularly since the mission to the Ganon's fortress. Link had once told me the Triforce of Courage had helped him to endure long missions with little food or rest. It was certainly showing in how hard I was able to train without tiring. Even I had to admit, there were definite advantages to carrying it around inside me.

My early-morning ride had helped me to accept the possibility of staying in this land, and marrying someone I had known for less than a month (at that time). But Link proved to be quite encouraging as well. During one of my rest periods that day, I sat next to him and told him all that had happened the previous night and in the wee hours of that morning.

He listened to my tale for a while, before saying, "It's good that you're at least open to staying here. I've never had a real companion on my adventures. Zelda only saw me a few times the last time Ganon was causing trouble, and even then only in disguise. The other Sages I didn't see much of at all. My fairy companion, Navi, was faithful to the very end, but she couldn't really share the dangers of my quest with me. Now I have someone who I can share victories with. Someone I can relate to. You have no idea how relieving that feels."

I considered his words. "I'm glad my presence here has made you feel that way," I said in reply. He was beginning to feel like a brother to me. I sometimes could feel the shared spirit between us; it caused a wonderful, peaceful feeling, like I could trust him with my life. Of course, we also looked very much alike. Had I not known, _I_ would have mistaken us for brothers.

But maybe we actually _were_ brothers, at least, in spirit.

After we reminisced for a while about the kinship we were sharing more and more, Link asked me, "What's it like where you come from?"

I looked back at him and smiled. "Beyond your wildest dreams," I replied. "Very little, if anything, is impossible. We can talk to people thousands of miles away. We can access any information we wish at the twitch of a finger and use great, complex machines to accomplish any task set before us. The big city – Portland – has buildings that are taller than any castle, and when the sun sets, we have our own lights to see in the dark."

Link's eyes got big at my descriptions of modern technology. "I should like to visit your home sometime," he said at length.

My smile got wider. "If I can convince Zelda," I responded, "maybe I can show you around there."

Link grinned widely. I could tell I had made his day. And talking to him had made mine.


	22. Chapter 22

It took a grand total of one month for the company of horse archers to be fully trained. All too soon, it came time for them to undertake their first mission. Ganon had not brought his legions to bear since the ill-advised and ill-fated assault on Hyrule Castle, and some members of our high command (Impa and Link in particular) were beginning to worry that he was withholding them to lure us into a false sense of security. Nabooru also insisted that we needed to get a sense of how many troops Ganon had at his disposal.

I couldn't have agreed more with all of them. I also wanted to know how many enemies we were dealing with. As well, I wanted to bring our new horse archers to bear in some skirmishes, as practice for them and to keep Ganon on his toes. Though, when I told the rest of our high command this point, Impa immediately countered that we didn't want to reveal our new secret weapon too soon.

Interestingly, it was Darunia who supported me by responding in turn to Impa. "Ganon will already suspect that the Gerudo have joined us," he stated. "He surely knows that we'll field _some_ horse archers. But those need not be our only secret weapon. My people, the Gorons, are loyal beyond measure to me, and are great warriors. There is no doubt that they will ally themselves to our army if I ask them to."

His suggestion was, of course, approved unanimously. And it was this that rescued my idea of leading the horse archers in a raid on Ganon's forces.

So it was that I found myself riding at the head of about 120 horse archers into the western valley. The company of a hundred was supported by a small Gerudo party, who were there mainly to boost the confidence of the fresh Hylian troops. Among these was, predictably, the young Gerudo who I'd noticed the day after my fateful conversation with Zelda. As I predicted, she rode next to her young Hylian admirer.

Link was with us as well, garbed in the green tunic and hood-cap that I'd become accustomed to seeing him wearing. The Master Sword hung at his side, though he carried his bow during the ride, as that was what he would be mainly using.

The mood of that march was one of great anticipation. The freshly-trained horse archers were about to enter into their first combat. I knew Ganon would throw several times our number of soldiers at us, so we could count on being quite heavily outnumbered. We therefore couldn't afford to engage the enemy in close combat.

We soon came upon a small enemy patrol. There were ten creatures, humanoid in form, but with deep purple skin and hideous faces. They carried short swords that resembled meat cleavers. These charged headlong at us, but were summarily dealt with by a veritable storm of arrows from at least forty of our number, including Link.

With this small number dropped, we continued through the valley, until we approached the late Gerudo stronghold. As we drew ever nearer to it, I wondered what Kaylee would think of all that I'd done so far. I just hoped I would survive this war so I could tell her about it.

I almost didn't notice when we actually rode before the impressive fortress. Inside the main gate were dozens, no, hundreds of terrifying humanoid creatures of varying sizes. There were more Bulblins, but also legions of other, similarly repugnant beings. I gave the signal to halt the company, almost too close to them for comfort.

These insidious monsters quickly noticed us and began to advance. "Fire at will!" I shouted to the troops. With that, each man and woman nocked and drew their bows, marked their targets, and released their arrows, not as one, but in a constant stream of fire. The well-aimed shots didn't take much effort to find their marks, and very quickly there was a layer of fallen bodies forming on the rocky ground. I pulled my own bow out and joined in the firing.

It took some time for any meaningful resistance to be put up, in the form of a squad of Bulblin archers. Even so, their low-powered bows did little damage to us. One Gerudo had her hand transfixed by a stone-tipped arrow, but that was the extent of the injuries. The fire from the Bulblins ceased quickly as we targeted them.

But then a new menace approached. Coming from within the passages of the fortress were a small team of what appeared to be giants, encased in thick plate armor from top to toe, and brandishing war swords and maces of considerable size. These newcomers charged headlong at us. I, along with several others, fired shots at them, only to have our arrows bounce pathetically off their armor. Link was only a horse's width from me, and I yelled to him, "What _are_ those things?"

Over the clank of the approaching bruisers, Link hollered back, "Darknuts! We have to pull back!"

Seeing the nonexistent effect of our arrows on the Darknuts, I readily agreed with him. "Pull back!" I shouted. The men and women near me heard and carried out the order with astonishing enthusiasm, to be joined in a wave by the rest of the company. Link and I brought up the rear, with those metal beasts closing in on us.

As we retreated, we were followed not only by the massive Darknuts, but also by a host of smaller creatures unwise enough to see us off. Parthian shots from the Gerudo and from Link whittled their numbers down quickly. A few of our Hylian recruits also attempted to fire backwards, with varying degrees of success (one arrow very nearly took my right ear off before landing harmlessly in front of one of the pursuing creatures).

Ahead of me, I saw a horse stumble and go down, bringing its rider, the young Hylian recruit with the crush on his Gerudo trainer, down with it. As I stopped and stared, the young lad tried desperately to get his horse back on its feet. But the mount clearly had been made lame in one leg, and the enemy were still hot on our tail, closing in on him.

I was very close to dismounting and charging in to keep the approaching hordes from him. But I was forestalled by the young Gerudo trainer who the boy admired so much, who, predictably, turned her own mount around and charged back, her bow spitting out a rapid barrage of arrows at the smaller, more vulnerable enemies. She stopped next to her charge and hauled him onto her horse. She then brought her steed back around and set it to a full gallop, with her companion wrapping his arms around her waist and holding on for dear life.

Seeing no further need to stand there, I did the same as her, wheeling Dagda back around to follow the rest of the troop, occasionally firing backwards into the still-pursuing legions. We set a cracking pace and made it out of the valley and back onto the plain in record time. Once there, our foe abruptly gave up the chase and turned back towards Ganon's fortress, as if on some telepathic command.

So our first action ended – quite predictably, it must be admitted – in a rout by our forces, but, thankfully, we suffered no fatalities, and our only casualties consisted of a few scratches and minor flesh wounds from the pitiful arrow fire of the Bulblins. Moreover, we took down a significant number of enemies (I wasn't paying attention to how many).

As we returned to Lon Lon Ranch, I knew we hadn't made much of a dent in the forces of darkness. But what _was_ significant was the fact that our large, fresh batch of horse archers were lethally effective. It almost hadn't been a fair fight, and, in hindsight, I realized that, had the Darknuts not showed themselves, we would likely have kept scything through Ganon's forces until we ran out of arrows.

Meeting Link and I at the horse ring were Zelda, Impa, Nabooru, and the other Sages. As I dismounted from Dagda, and Link from Epona, Zelda asked, "Shall I assume the horse archers did well?"

I grinned widely. "Better than I could've ever hoped," was my answer. And I meant it.

Zelda smiled brightly, clapping me on the shoulder in an unmistakable gesture of congratulations, one that I graciously returned.

And, for a brief moment, I forgot all about our conversation from all those days before.


	23. Chapter 23

After our raid, we began to see small groups of the enemy periodically leave the western valley and move around the plains. I guessed that our lightning attack had shown Ganon just what he was up against; those small bands of fell creatures were likely patrols, set to scout out our positions. Practically every day, small parties of horse archers would leave the ranch as counter-patrols, to ensure the enemy didn't get near our own fortress, and if they did, that they wouldn't return to Ganon's to tell of it. Sometimes it wouldn't be the horse archers, but small parties of Hylian knights that went out. Either way, we seemed to be having no problem dispatching enemy patrols when they came.

As that first week dragged on, I began to worry, though. Particularly about the Darknuts, those intimidating steel behemoths we had encountered in the raid. Our arrows hadn't penetrated their thick armor plates, and I had a hard time believing that our broadswords, spears, or even our crossbow bolts would do the trick either. The Hylian army lacked any real armor-piercing weaponry.

Once, while I was sparring with Link, I asked him, "Do you know of any weapons that could bring down those steel monsters?"

My green-clad friend shrugged. "There wouldn't be many," he responded. "If you had something big like a battle axe, maybe. Or a large two-handed sword."

His second suggestion made me skeptical. "How would a large sword go through if a normally-sized one couldn't?"

Parrying one of my practice strokes, he answered. "I wouldn't know that. But the last time Ganon was a threat, I had a big two-hander given to me by the Great Goron. I was able to defeat a Gerudo in an Iron Knuckle suit once with it."

Once again, Link had used a term which baffled me (though I was beginning to grow accustomed to it). So I asked back, "What's an Iron Knuckle?"

"It's a heavy suit of iron plate armor the Gerudo sometimes wear," he told me as a quick thrust to my gut ended our sparring session. "The Gerudo usually use a heavy two-headed battle axe with it."

A heavy suit of plate armor? Worn in conjunction with a heavy battle axe? It would take a strong Gerudo indeed to use such an array, but it sounded like just the thing we would need to counter the Darknuts. Immediately I thanked a rather confused Link and ran to the command building.

When I arrived, I found Rauru, Darunia, Impa, and Azeru in conference around a map. All four of them looked up, startled, as I burst in. I looked first to Azeru. "What can you tell me about an Iron Knuckle?" I asked straightaway.

She blinked once with the forwardness of my inquiry, then recovered. "It's a thick plate-iron suit some of us wear into battle. We usually carry heavy axes with it. Is there something significant about that?"

Excited, I nodded. "We encountered heavily-armored monsters during the raid. Darknuts, Link called them. I've been trying to think of a way to break through their armor. Could someone in an Iron Knuckle suit bring them down?"

Azeru replied in the affirmative, causing me to crack a grin. "Would there be a way to have some suits made?" I inquired, to which Azeru nodded, cracking a grin of her own as she began to see where I was going. The other three just stared, Rauru lifting one of his bushy eyebrows.

…

It took a few days for the first of the Iron Knuckle suits to be made to Azeru and Nabooru's design, but when it was completed and I saw it, I was awed. It consisted of a panoply of thick iron and bronze plates, with large pyramidal studs protruding from them. The heavy shoulder pieces rose to head level and extended halfway down a theoretical wearer's upper arm. The helm was a simple, but thick, cask of iron, adorned with a pair of twisting, decorative horns, and covered the full face with an oblong visor with five large vision holes, arranged in a pentagon pattern. The huge, double-bladed axe that was made alongside the suit would be held by thick bronze gauntlets that covered not only the hands of a wearer, but also most of the forearm. When I convinced Nabooru to model it, the result looked terrifying.

Despite the apparent bulk of the array, she actually walked outside the smithy in it, right up to a training post, and, gripping the axe in both hands, proceeded to savagely attack the post. I could tell that she had worn this form of armor and wielded a similar axe before, from the expert manner in which she hewed the thick wooden post in half. Easily a score of Hylian soldiers watched, incredulous, as Nabooru took a step into the post and delivered her final stroke, which separated the top of the post from the bottom. Link was there as well, calmly looking on with no hint of surprise. He walked up to the faceless, fearsome axe-wielder and clapped her on the back. "That was just as amazing as it was when I first saw you do that, Nabooru," he told her as she took off her helm, smiling broadly.

"If I remember," she replied, "you managed to cut through the armor with that big sword of yours."

My eyebrows went up. This sounded like a story worth hearing. Perhaps I would ask one of them to recount it later, I told myself. But instead, without a word, I whipped out my phone and discreetly snapped a picture of the two of them. It made for an interesting image: Link, short and slight, in his sleek green outfit, and Nabooru, encased in bulky plate armor that, despite her lean build, she wore with relative ease.

Link then walked over to me. "So _this_ is how you're planning to counter the Darknuts," he mused, to my nod. He looked back at Nabooru for few seconds, then continued, "I like it."

He and I went over to Nabooru, where I shook her hand, impressed by her skill with the cumbersome equipment. "If we can outfit ten soldiers with these, we could give those Darknuts a run for their money."

I'm sure the blacksmith heard my comment; I recall at that moment hearing a distant, drawn-out groan, accompanied by what could've been the words: "Not again!"


	24. Chapter 24

A few days after that first suit was completed, we all began to notice that enemy patrols were increasing both in frequency and in size. It was getting more and more difficult to wipe them out, to the point where enemies actually managed to escape on a few occasions. The enemy scouting parties began to get more varied as well; I was beginning to learn the various species of monsters we were up against. Aside from the diminutive Bulblins, there were taller, somewhat broader specimens with red or deep purple skin – Zelda had been with me when I'd first seen them, and had called them _Bokoblins_. Once, when I was leading a patrol, I encountered what was called a _Moblin_ , an even larger creature with a face reminiscent of a pig; the one I saw actually was decently equipped, with light plate armor and a wicked-looking polearm that reminded me of a glaive. These and many others became increasingly easy to find in enemy parties.

Everyone in high command was getting nervous with each passing day. The growing intensity of our skirmishes suggested that Ganon was testing our forces, and that a major attack would come soon. I began to have less and less leisure time – and fewer opportunities to take photos for Kaylee – as I was constantly rushing between patrols, briefings, training sessions, and command meetings. Impa, who was nervous that Ganon might send his forces to the more weakly-garrisoned Hyrule Castle, gave orders for infantrymen to start constructing a low palisade to run between our two strongholds in order to prevent Ganon from splitting our forces. I wasn't sure the construction wouldn't be finished in time.

Things were about to heat up; we could all feel it.

The feel of one particular morning, two weeks after the first Iron Knuckle was unveiled, was tense as I was making a round of the ranch, ensuring that everything needed to function as a military installment was running properly. As I skirted the horse ring to check the watch on the northern and western walls, I was approached by Link and Zelda. Link called out to me, "Brian! Do you have a spare moment?"

I turned to them and called back, "Yeah, but not long! What's up?"

Link answered, "Can I show you something in my barrack?"

I nodded and walked over to him and Zelda. They led me to where Link's barrack was. Link opened the door and ushered us both in. As the three of us gathered around Link's bed, I noticed the bed contained a long bundle, wrapped in a sheet.

Link began to explain, "I've been thinking about this for a while, and talking with Zelda about it – she agrees with me – but we're both worried about your safety in battle. That sword and shield aren't going to protect you from everything. Obviously you're not going to be beating any Darknuts with what you have right now. So, Zelda and I decided that it would be best to give you this."

As he said this, he unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a large, two-handed longsword, with a blue hilt akin to the Master Sword's, and a hefty blade. Such a weapon wasn't built for the fast patterns of swordplay I had been previously learning; this was a weapon for brutal chops, for carving an enemy to pieces. Link went on, "This sword was given to me by the Great Goron at Death Mountain. It is harder than anything we Hylians can produce. It served me well in my first quest to defeat Ganon. You'll be able to fend off anything Ganon throws at us with this. It's so hard and heavy it can stop a Darknut's sword."

It was a gift fit for a hero, to be sure. I did not doubt Link's claims about the lengthy weapon before me. And I was certainly glad Link and Zelda held as deep a concern for my survival as they did. Graciously thanking Link, I took the sword in my hands, holding it almost with reverence. This blade had been wielded by the Hero of Time himself, and now, out of friendship and concern, he was passing it down to me.

Truly, I had never had such friends as these two.

As I held the blade, I began to feel my right hand vibrating intensely, and the Triforce symbol on it was glowing as brightly as it had when Zelda and I had first scouted out Ganon's fortress. Zelda looked at me. "You're making my piece of the Triforce resonate," she said, not scolding, not wondering, simply observing. Her own hand was glowing as well, I could see, and the light from both of our hands was illuminating the entire barrack.

Strangely, I no longer disliked having the Triforce on my hand. In that moment, in the midst of all the anticipation, I felt oddly at peace. Then cautiously, Zelda presented the back of her right hand to me. I reached out and touched it with the back of my own.

And in an instant, everything went white. I expected to feel disoriented, but instead all I felt was a remarkable confidence. Courage, exactly what my piece of the Triforce was supposed to represent. And all of a sudden, I remembered something Kaylee had told me before I'd left my peaceful little world: _You'll be fine. You'll kick Ganon's butt. And then you'll get to tell me all about it._ I felt in that moment as though her comment was not in vain, that I _would_ survive all of this, _and_ be able to return to the Onyx House in Eugene, Oregon in one piece.

Then I felt a hand close around my right hand, and at once, my surroundings returned. I found myself forehead-to-forehead with Zelda, as if some unknown force had driven our heads together. Our right hands, still glowing, were holding each other. Neither of us was breathing hard or panting; we were both breathing deeply, evenly, silently. _How Link must be gawking at us_ , I thought absently as we finally pulled away.

Sure enough, Link was looking at us, wide-eyed. "I've never seen the Triforce make people do _that_ ," he said at length. "For a moment I thought you two were going to start kissing!"

And the funny thing was, my mind didn't have a knee-jerk reaction to that, as it might have a month before. Still, I was somewhat flustered. Hurriedly, I thanked Link for his gift, gave both him and Zelda a quick bear hug, and left the barrack, quite astonished indeed.

And, for the first time, I felt torn about leaving Hyrule.


	25. Chapter 25

A week later, the first major attack came.

I was practicing my longsword technique with a Hylian knight who (fortunately) had handled similar weapons and was willing to impart his knowledge to me. We were in the midst of a sparring session when horn calls arose from Impa's connecting wall (which was only about a third of the way completed). The horn was accompanied by the hoarse battle-cries of our enemies. Without delay, I raced to my barrack, set down the longsword Link had given me, took up my bow and its arrow case, buckled on my broadsword, and ran out to where Dagda was grazing. Link, Nabooru, Darunia, and (to my surprise) Zelda were also gearing up for battle. Nabooru had already raised the cry for our horse archers, causing the horse pen to be swarmed with troops calling their steeds. Zelda was garbed in a coat of brass scale armor and carried a bow, with a case of gold-colored arrows that reflected the sunlight.

We rode out (or, in Darunia's case, rolled out) and made for the construction project as quickly as our mounts could carry us.

There we found the soldiers on the construction site hard-pressed to fend off a large, heavily-armed attack force of a thousand or more. I saw a number of armored Moblins in the mix, as well as a considerable number of armored skeletal warriors (Link had once referred to them as _Stalfos_ ) bearing crooked swords and large round shields. It was Zelda who fired the first shot, her arrow blazing across the space separating us from the foe like a comet. It went clean through a Moblin and took the leg off another.

In short order, the rest of our horse archers let loose in a storm of missiles that devastated the enemy ranks.

The foe caught on quickly, though, and a large contingent of them immediately abandoned the vulnerable construction team and made a mad dash for us. Several went down to our fire, but eventually they drew so near that I gave the order to fall back, which we readily did.

Only to find ourselves facing an even larger host of lighter enemy troops, mostly Bulblins and Bokoblins, small and relatively weak, but deadly in their current numbers. I shouted for one of the recruits, an older fellow who felt somehow motivated to join us, to signal for reinforcements. As he raised his horn to his lips, Darunia called to me, "I can deal with these imps! You focus on the bigger brutes!"

I nodded in return, whereupon, he curled into a tight ball and rolled swiftly across the plain, smashing into the enemy's light infantry. I caught no more than a glimpse of his devastating effect on them before pointing with my bow at the still-pursuing Moblins and Stalfos and yelling out, "Concentrate fire on their heavy infantry!"

How my force managed to hear me in that chaos, I still don't know, but they reloaded quickly and fired another punishing volley into our adversary, dropping another forty at least. The arrows from Zelda's bow proved particularly nasty, frequently taking limbs or heads off of the large-bodied enemies, sometimes even cleaving them in twain.

But the danger wasn't past yet. The pursuing heavy infantry had turned tail and run, abandoning their comrades to attack the wall construction alone, and the Bulblins and Bokoblins were all but finished when I heard an unearthly screech from above. Looking up, I saw several large, terrifying-looking birds with massive wingspans and cruelly-hooked beaks.

Apparently Zelda had seen them too. "Kargaroks!" she shouted, pointing to the incoming horrors. Our recruits looked upon this new menace with new fear. We had never yet faced an aerial attack, much less one from creatures so fearsome as these. I could see some of the men looking like they very much wanted to flee for their lives. But Link fired an arrow at one, piercing it through its long neck and bringing it down with a pained gurgle.

Taking his cue, I sent an arrow of my own at the foremost of the Kargaroks, missing it narrowly.

Encouraged, our horse archers joined in, shooting as individuals now, rather than in their old volleys. Several more of the frightful-looking birds dropped from the sky, but others swooped in low, talons poised to grab our troops from out of their saddles. Thankfully, this exposed them to more accurate fire, sometimes from point-blank range. We were able to shoot most of the Kargaroks out of the air, though, in a moment of terror, one of them managed to latch onto me and lift me out of my saddle just as I shot it through the heart; the result of that was a rather awkward landing on the grass, which would have been quite comical in different circumstances. Out of some forty of those, five managed to fly away (I counted).

Very soon, a battalion of infantry came in and aided Darunia in clearing out the last of the enemy's light infantry. The heavy infantry that hadn't pursued my horse archers were leaving the battlefield. We had beaten back the first of Ganon's dedicated attacks, and we were cheering as we marched back through the gates of the ranch.

When all of our dead were collected from the field that evening, there came the sobering fact that we ourselves had lost a good sixty fighters, mostly from among those who had been busy at the wall. It was a comparatively small number, but as heavily outnumbered as we were in this war, I knew that we could ill afford such casualties.

Still, we celebrated our victory that night, as much as some of us could, given the casualties. Many of the fallen had family or friends who had survived the attack, and many of these survivors didn't join the feasting around the large bonfires we'd built in an open area of the ranch. Some knelt by the bodies of their fallen comrades and mourned them.

One of these, I noted, was the fifteen-year-old horse archer. He was kneeling by the corpse of one of the deceased, sobbing uncontrollably. His Gerudo friend (who couldn't have been any older than seventeen years herself) knelt by him, an arm around his shoulder in consolation. As I watched curiously, she pulled him in close, letting him cry on her shoulder.

She was still with him a half-hour later, as the victory celebration was winding down and I had an excuse to watch them again. Even after seeing their relationship develop for two months, it still fascinated me how these two young people from cultures that once had been at war could carry on such a close bond.

Even as I mused on this, I saw the Gerudo hold her younger student close to her and give him a soft peck on the cheek. They sat like that for another hour, wrapped in each other's arms, at least, as far as I knew. They still were by the time I finally went to my barrack to bed down.

Zelda was already asleep in the bed next to mine, her coat of scale armor discarded at the foot of it, replaced by whatever she wore as nightclothes. Taking cover behind my own bed, I discarded my own clothes, save for my underwear, and tucked myself in, dropping off to sleep after fifteen minutes.


	26. Chapter 26

The next morning, I walked over to the headquarters to meet with the rest of high command (which now consisted of myself, Zelda, Link, Rauru, Darunia, Impa, Nabooru, and Azeru). Now that Ganon had launched a respectable offensive against us, it was time to formulate a battle plan against the event of a full-scale attack.

I was the latest of the high command to arrive, and when I walked through the door, they were already engaged in discussion. Rauru was, at that moment, telling Zelda, "I've been alive for a long time. Our people were still adapting to life on the surface of Hyrule when I was born. I've lived through three scourges of evil and two wars in our land. I know how powerful the forces of darkness can become. If Ganon has even two thirds of the troops that the old wind mage Vaati let loose in his two scourges before the Civil War, than he will have more than enough to overwhelm our forces, tactics or not. Even considering the losses we could inflict, Ganon will still have enough monsters to ravage most of Hyrule."

"Than what's the point of resisting?" asked Link, with an uncharacteristic amount of heat. "If the forces of darkness are really that strong, then why don't we just let Ganon walk in? Why don't we just _hand_ him the Triforce?"

All of us fell silent at that. Link had, of course, been sarcastic in his suggestion. But I'm sure we all wondered at that moment why we were still fighting, if the outcome was as certain as Rauru feared it might be.

It was Azeru who broke the silence at last. "Because we have something worth fighting for. Think about it. What is Ganon fighting for? Power? Doesn't sound like all that much, if you ask me. We're all fighting for something more powerful. I'm fighting for my people, as I'm sure the rest of you are doing for yours. We're fighting for this land. But we're also fighting for an idea, for whatever this nation stands for. Peace, I guess? Freedom? Justice? That's got to count for something."

Though I had never, until coming to Hyrule, been an avid student of combat, I had studied warfare throughout the ages, and Azeru's comment had called to my mind some millennia-old words out of China, which I repeated aloud as soon as she'd finished: " _The Moral Law causes people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger._ " When everyone looked at me, I explained hastily, "I read that in a book about warfare once. I never understood it. But I think Azeru explained it perfectly."

Impa picked up on Azeru and my line of thought quickly. "You two are saying, then," she asked for confirmation, "that because we have something worth fighting for, our people will be more willing to face Ganon's hordes, and we'll have a better chance of winning?"

Azeru nodded, as did I. Then Nabooru spoke up. "So how are we going to win this, especially if Ganon turns out to have as large a force as Rauru says he might?"

In my head, a plan formed, calling upon all the research I'd done on the internet, all the books I'd read and documentaries I'd watched. I explained it on the fly, even while I was still thinking about it. "We need to evacuate the whole civilian population. Get them to places where it will be hard for Ganon's forces to reach. And we have to send a few soldiers with them, to teach them how to fight in case we _don't_ win. Once they reach a safe place, weapons have to be mass-produced for them and they will have to be taught how to use them. Maybe we can't win here, but the rest of our people can fight a war of attrition and, maybe after a few years, maybe after a few generations, they will be able to destroy the last of Ganon's forces."

"What about Ganon himself?" Zelda asked. "If we lose, he acquires the Triforce. That means he'll be far harder to deal with than his monsters."

"Then one of us," I replied, indicating her and myself, "will have to go with the rest of the people to ensure he doesn't get the whole thing. The people will need a leader, on top of that."

Zelda immediately picked up on my suggestion, but shook her head. "Unless you're willing to be the one that leaves, that won't happen," she stated. "Rauru can lead the people. We'll need the bearers of both the Triforce of Wisdom _and_ the Triforce of Courage if we are to have a prayer of beating Ganon himself. His armies aren't our main threat, especially not if we play our cards right. We may be able to effectively cripple those armies of monsters, despite any worst-case scenario we can come up with. But then we'll have to fight our way to Ganon, and then fight _him_. That's where _we_ have to come in."

Hands raised in surrender, I conceded to Zelda's logic. With that settled, though, I went asked, "So where can the civilians take refuge?"

It was Impa who answered me: "Anywhere south of the great Lake Hylia should be safe. Ganon's forces won't be able to go there without stretching themselves thin. The Kingdom of Labrynna should receive our people temporarily. They have been friends to our nation in the past, so they will likely help us. Additionally, no one knows what lies on the eastern side of the Lost Woods. Our knowledge only goes as far east as the land of the Kokiri. There may be safe places beyond that."

"Then we must evacuate the civilians to those places," I concluded. "As for actually defeating Ganon's troops, we'll need a place where they'll be bottlenecked, preferably where they'll have to fight uphill, a place we won't need as many troops to hold, but where we can counterattack from easily. Is there anywhere around here that could fit that bill?"

Darunia and Impa both nodded. "Kakariko," Impa replied. "The approach to the village is a narrow valley that goes uphill into the plateau. Death Mountain and the Gorons are within easy reach of the place. We might be able to hold it for a long time, maybe even longer than we can hold this ranch. There is also a long, narrow trail up Death Mountain that leads to the Gorons' great city there that could be held for a long time."

"Also," Darunia added, "my people will be committed to defending the mountain. That'll give us even more troops."

There wasn't a single one of us in that room who didn't show some sign of gladness at the thought of being able to hold the path to Kakariko and Death Mountain. "Let it be done, then," Zelda said at length. "We must evacuate our people and pull our forces to Kakariko. Then we must wait for Ganon to send his forces to us."

I nodded my assent, as did Link and Nabooru. As we left the headquarters building, I found myself hoping that Kakariko was as defensible a position as Impa said it was.

...

 **Just a quick author's note here: the quote Brian makes in paragraph 6 comes from Chapter 1, stanzas 5 and 6 of the 1910 Lionel Giles translation of** ** _The Art of War_** **, by Sun Tzu. I believe that covers all the quotes for this chapter. Once again, many thanks to all of you who read this story!**


	27. Chapter 27

Zelda's evacuation order took around three days to circulate through the kingdom, by which time, those of us at the ranch who were making preparations to transfer to Kakariko began to see the first refugees passing by the ranch.

It was also decided that, out of the Sages, Rauru, Ruto, and Saria would leave so that the people would have someone to follow. Rauru and a squadron of ten Hylian knights would escort the majority of the refugees into the territory of Labrynna, while Saria and Ruto would bring five to take the rest through the Lost Woods; Saria, being from the area, knew her way through the woods, and was a good choice to lead the people through there.

It was a fateful day when everyone at the ranch began to leave, and those who would be fleeing the kingdom bade goodbye to Link and Zelda. The first to say her goodbyes to Link was Saria, his childhood friend. She jumped into his arms and hugged him for well over a minute, neither speaking nor crying. I knew, though, that the parting would be hard for her. As they let go of each other, Link said to her, "Be strong. You'll have to lead the people through the woods. I'll try to see you as soon as I can." Only then did the young Kokiri shed any tears, nodding her acknowledgement to her new responsibility.

Another of Link's old friends, Malon, was next. With a sisterly embrace, she cautioned him, "Keep your head down, Link. Beat Ganon for me." Link grinned sadly at that and nodded in affirmation.

Then Rauru strode up to us, regarding not only Link, but also Zelda and I. "You carry all of Hyrule on your shoulders, my young heroes," he said to us. "May you have victory in the end."

"We will," Zelda replied, any doubts gone, replaced by quiet confidence. Link nodded in emphasis, and I gave the older man a crisp salute, as a soldier being sent to battle by his general.

The last goodbye came from Ruto. First she came up to Zelda and me. As she looked us both in the eye, she said, "Thank you – both of you. You always believed in getting Link back. I'm glad I could be there when you did it." She and Zelda hugged tightly, and then she and I shook hands.

Then she walked over to Link. They wrapped each other in their arms, tears coming from both of their eyes. I never heard what was said between them, so softly and tenderly was it spoken. But Zelda and I both saw the long, passionate kiss they shared as they parted. For a moment, a part of me wished I could've had a relationship like theirs. As such, I dearly hoped – for both of their sake – that Link, at least, would survive the coming war.

Before any of us knew it, those of us who would be standing our ground were marching out the gate of the ranch, bound for Kakariko, and – hopefully – victory.

…

The march to Kakariko took about as long as the march from the ranch to the western valley. All the while, the eastern part of the great plateau loomed over us, the deep cleft that led to the village clearly visible. When we started to enter this valley, I realized that the eastern plateau was barely a third the altitude of the western one, and the ground of the eastern valley was smoother and greener. But it sloped gradually uphill, making for a difficult climb to wherever we chose to hold the enemy.

At the end of the valley stood the village itself. Kakariko was a small town of maybe a hundred and fifty dwellings (larger, of course, than any video game could have led me to believe), set at varying heights into the plateau, on terraces planted with green turf. At one end of the town stood a large windmill. Off to one side was a grassy trail that led someplace unknown. At the other side was a rockier trail that led towards the large, volcanic mountain I'd seen on my first journey out of Hyrule Castle; I assumed this was Death Mountain.

As I surveyed the layout of the village, the lay of the path leading up to it, and speculated on the lay of the trail that led up to the mountain, I grinned. The ranch had been a superb defensive position, but this village was unparalleled. There were so many places to bottleneck an army that I firmly believed that a small group of soldiers with big shields and long spears, backed up by a company of archers, could stop a legion in its tracks.

Zelda and Link were riding next to me as we entered. I leaned over and told Zelda, "This place is amazing!"

She and Link both smiled and nodded. Link replied to me, "It feels so different now that the people have packed up. I always hoped to live here once I grew old. It's usually so…What in the green world?" He said this last, stiffening in his saddle as he looked back, a look of total shock coming over him. Fearing that Ganon's forces may have caught our rearmost troops on the march, I reluctantly turned around.

What I saw was nowhere near as intimidating. Just a small, freckled boy – probably a Kokiri, judging by his size and dress – running alongside the marching column, his reddish-brown hair bobbing with each stride under his bright green cap. He carried what appeared to be a dagger – which to him would have qualified as a short sword – and a slingshot.

As Link dismounted, the child ran directly up to him. "Link," he panted, "I've come to join the army."

Apparently, Link knew the boy. "What're you doing here, Mido?" he asked incredulously. "You should be following Saria with the rest of the Kokiri."

In response, the lad drew himself up to his full height (a rather useless display, since he obviously was so terribly small) and declared, "If you defeated Ganon once, and if you are going to do it again now, I should do my part too."

Now completely worried, Link said to him, "Mido, you've never fought before. I won't let you get yourself killed."

But Mido, it seemed, wasn't going to be swayed. He stood there, rooted to the turf, and seemed to dare one of us to send him back the way he'd come.

Link shrugged and stood up to lead Epona to the village stables. As he passed me, he whispered, "We've _got_ to keep him out of the battle line." Just as shocked as Link was, I could give no answer, save a nod.


	28. Chapter 28

The next week was spent in apprehensive preparation for Ganon to launch an attack. The plateau that lined the eastern valley was made accessible by a series of stone ramps, constructed by the Gorons of Death Mountain. Just like Darunia, their chieftain, the Gorons were physically impressive specimens. Massive, rock-hard, and almost infinitely tough, they seemed the perfect builders. I hoped they were just as good in battle.

Those of us who weren't constructing anything were engaged in near-constant weapons practice. This included myself, Link, Zelda, Impa, our horse archers, the Gerudo, and even young Mido. The lad had little skill with a blade to start with, but he was an eager - perhaps overly eager - learner. It was just as well he could fire his slingshot with pinpoint precision, as Link and I were going to ensure that he never had occasion to use the tiny sword he carried.

I did show the young Kokiri one thing, though. On day two of our stay in Kakariko, I made a sling out of a few pieces of leather and gave it to him to use in place of the slingshot. My reasoning was simple: a slingshot, even a human-sized one, could never bring down an enemy in a fight, much less if they had a good, solid helmet. Mido's piece was even smaller than the slingshots I used to fire as a child, eliminating any hope of him being any more than a nuisance in battle. A sling, on the other hand, was a deceptively effective weapon, to which it owed its widespread use in warfare in my own world's more ancient times. The boy accepted my gift, though, admittedly, his enthusiasm lay mostly with swordsmanship.

I practiced too, focusing mainly on handling the massive two-hander that Link had given me. Many times over that week, I found myself wondering at how quickly I'd learned weapons techniques at all during my time in Hyrule; the longsword was no exception. I had noticed often that the Triforce mark on my hand tended to glow when I practiced my weapons techniques. Perhaps my rapidly-increasing abilities had something to do with that. Not for the first time, I realized that having the Triforce of Courage accidentally passed to me had not been all bad.

All around me, preparations were going smoothly. The ramp to the plateaus was quickly finished, allowing crossbowmen to fire into the valley without the threat of the enemy closing in on them (for this reason, I planned on stationing Mido up there with his sling). A few smithies had collaborated to finish the ten suits of Iron Knuckle armor, and these were given to Gerudo fighters to acclimate to; they managed it rather well, to be truthful, and required very little practice with. Having finished those ten panoplies, the smithies switched to making long pikes, and idea I had come up with to more easily hold the narrow valley; constructing each of those was, in comparison, a piece of cake.

There was one rocky spot in the preparation. Many of the Hylian soldiers had not been stationed at the Ranch over the last couple months, and so weren't used to having the Gerudo as comrades. A few times, I had to break up altercations between Hylian and Gerudo warriors. Sometimes these were verbal spats, sometimes they were physical brawls.

One of these occasions occurred on day four of our stay, as I was, as usual, practicing with the longsword. I heard voices raised behind me, and paused mid-swing to look back. When I did, what I saw broke my poor little heart. The young Hylian horse archer was seated on a bench, his arm around the waist of his Gerudo trainer. But a threesome of Hylian knights were standing around them, looking quite displeased indeed.

I managed to catch some of their words. The tall, dark-haired knight who appeared to be the ringleader growled at the boy, "Look at you, all sweet on one of those thieves."

One of his companions, a lighter-haired fellow, chimed in immediately, "To think that good young Hylian men could fall for a Gerudo...do you know how much shame that brings us, boy?"

The lad had no chance to answer, for the third, an older knight with auburn hair and a mustache of the same color, grabbed the young horse archer forcefully by the shoulder. "If I could," he snarled, "I'd haul you off to wherever your father lives and tell him you've fallen in with these desert rats." He spat those last two words out so spitefully that the Gerudo shuddered.

That was when I decided I'd seen enough. I sheathed the longsword across my back and strode briskly up to the gang of knights. I grabbed the blond one by the shoulder and shoved him back. "What in the name of all that's good in the world do you think you're doing?" I growled at the knight. I turned to the other two and continued, "What are any of you doing? If you've got anything against the Gerudo, you'd better get rid of it fast, because we're not going to be beating Ganon with _that_ kind of attitude. If it weren't for _them_ , we'd have a lot fewer soldiers. They trained the horse archers, they chose to become our allies, so if you're going to continue to treat them like crap, then I don't know what's wrong with your thick wooden heads."

I could see that I'd angered the three knights, so I prepared the statement I knew would make them back off. "But if you insist, go ahead and protest to Queen Zelda," I said in a more reasonable tone, before switching suddenly to a drily sarcastic tone by saying, "I'm sure she'd absolutely _love_ to hear your concerns."

That shut the three of them up, and they walked away, grumbling about "Queen Zelda's boyfriend."

As they left, I looked at the young couple still seated on the bench, who were still looking more than a little frightened. I smiled at the two of them and told them, "Don't let those meatheads bother you," before walking off and resuming my longsword practice.


	29. Chapter 29

It was exactly a week after we had relocated to Kakariko when Ganon finally launched his offensive.

Around noon that day, I was observing Mido practicing with his sling. He was showing rapid improvement, much like with his sword technique. From time to time, he'd make a slight error, which I would quickly and calmly correct, doing my best not to chide him. I still worried about his safety when the battle came, even though I had ensured he would be safe atop the plateau.

I was, at that moment, correcting his stance when one of my horse archers came riding frantically into the town. Zelda, Nabooru, Link, Impa, and I converged on the man as he breathlessly gasped out his report to the queen: "Your majesty, monsters are leaving Gerudo Valley. Thousands of them. They are marching east at this moment."

None of us spoke for a time. Then Zelda finally uttered quietly, "So this is when it begins." Another second passed before she ran to a herald and told him, "Signal every soldier to his post."

The herald nodded and raised a curved bronze horn, in appearance akin to a bull's horn, to his lips. The deep, clarion note it produced rang through the whole area. On cue, every Hylian and Gerudo rushed to their posts. The crossbowmen, with Mido in tow, climbed the Goron-built ramps to the top of the plateau. A group of about a hundred Hylian soldiers grabbed the long, well-made pikes our smithies had made and rushed to their positions in the valley. Darunia came out of one of the houses in the town and rolled towards the trail that lead to Death Mountain. The archers followed the pikemen down the valley, the Hylian knights and a number of Gerudo rushed to the stables, while the rest of the Hylian infantry, as well as most of the Gerudo, clustered in the town.

It was all part of a plan we had collaborated on not long beforehand. The pikemen would block the narrow valley about two thirds of the way to Kakariko. The archers, including my horse archers, would remain behind them to fire volleys head-on into the approaching enemy, while the crossbowmen on the plateau would fire from above. Then, when the time was right, we would give another signal, and counterattack the enemy, with the Gorons and the mounted knights spearheading the charge, followed by the infantry, which included our ten Iron Knuckles.

Each of us commanders would stick with one part of our force. Zelda would take her position with the archers, just behind the pikemen. Link would command the knights. Darunia, of course, would be leading his Gorons. Impa was stationed with the pikemen. Nabooru had originally wanted to station herself with the infantry, but Link had asked her to stay with the crossbowmen to protect Mido, which she had grudgingly agreed to. To round it out, Azeru and I took our position with the infantry reserve in the town.

As the soldiers were making their way to their posts, Zelda pulled me aside. "I've been meaning to give you this for a while," she said. "You'll need it for the battle ahead." Then she dragged me along towards one of the larger dwellings in the town. Just before we entered, I looked back and caught a glimpse of the young Gerudo-Hylian couple. They were kissing much as Link and Ruto had when they'd parted. It made sense too; neither one knew if they the other would survive the battle. Frankly, I didn't know if _any_ of us would. But I had to put the thought away as Zelda pulled me into the building.

Inside sat a cuirass of iron scale armor, much like Zelda's gold-colored piece. Near it lay a pair of high iron boots, a mail shirt, and an iron helm that resembled that worn by the Hylian knights, though without a visor. I stood looking at the set, confused. The queen cleared the confusion up for me, though. "This was made for my brother when he was born, so he could wear it when he grew up," she said.

I almost couldn't believe her. "You have a brother?" I asked incredulously.

The blonde queen lowered her head and replied sadly, "I _had_ one. He died, with my mother, in an ambush during the Civil War. Since you don't have armor of your own, I want you to wear this into battle."

Though shocked and saddened by Zelda's story, I kept my face expressionless as I nodded in acknowledgement of her wishes. Immediately I walked over to the armor. First I slipped on the boots, then the mail shirt, fastening it with my belt. Then came the cuirass over that. Tying a few leather thongs secured it to me. Then I set the helm on my head. Arrayed thus, I saluted the queen, and we exited the building together.

Then I rushed to my barrack to grab the longsword Link had given me. I realized then that I was going into battle with equipment given to me as gifts by my two closest friends in Hyrule. Once this war was over, if we all survived, I definitely owed them big-time.

 _If_ we all survived.

Finally, I stepped into place next to Azeru with the infantry. She gave me, or the armor, an appraising look. "That's some armor you've got there," she said at length, perhaps trying to dispel the nervousness we likely all felt. "You almost look like a male Zelda."

I raised an eyebrow at the comparison, not really in any mood to banter. More four tense hours, we sat there and waited for some word from the frontline. No one ate anything, for fear of the pike line breaking and the enemy rushing through while we had food in our hands.

Link was nearby with the knights, also waiting for something to happen. He was continually doing practice swings with the Master Sword. His horse, Epona, stood nearby, waiting to be re-mounted for battle.

Soon, Darunia returned to Kakariko, leading an army of Gorons with him. Many were carrying hammers with enormous iron heads, but most were relying solely on their rock-hard bodies and fists. They, it seemed, had come prepared to lead the charge.

After what seemed an eternity, a horn call echoes through the valley, signalling that whatever enemy had attacked had now been fully committed to the attack for long enough to wear their numbers down. And that meant one thing.

It was time for Link and I to go into action.


	30. Chapter 30

As the horn call rang through the valley, Gorons, Gerudo, and Hylians alike began to ready themselves and their weapons. Link stopped his practice swings and rushed to remount Epona. Azeru sprang up from where she'd been sitting, playing a game of dice with a fellow Gerudo, and grabbed her glaive. I drew the longsword from my back and prepared to charge into action.

I heard a sudden rattle behind me as one of the ten Gerudo in the Iron Knuckle suits tried to get up too fast and landed on her rear end, requiring several Hylian soldiers to help her up and garnering a round of laughter from everyone around her. Even I laughed; it might be the last thing I'd laugh at, I realized, and I may as well have enjoyed it.

My laughter brought up the memory of Kaylee. Of her sitting on her bed playing _Zelda_ games, laughing as she talked about her day. I realized I might not see my best friend again. And so I mentally held on to the last thing she had ever said to me - _Go get 'em, Brian_ \- as I steeled myself for battle.

But it was over too soon. The Gorons, led by Darunia, were already rolling down the valley, and Link was starting to lead the knights after them. I turned to the infantry, holding the cumbersome longsword aloft in one hand. "Now's the time, lads!" I yelled out, doing my best to sound like I wasn't completely terrified. Those Gerudo who were with us lifted their voices in a fierce battle cry, grinning widely, which surprised me; I had known they had a strong warrior ethos, but I had no idea just how eager for battle they actually were. Their cheers were taken up by the rest of the infantry. I let them cheer for a few seconds, until the last of the mounted knights had passed us. Then, after a quick, silent prayer to the Lord to keep me alive, I rushed after them, with Azeru and the rest of the infantrymen behind.

We reached the archers and pikemen in two seconds flat. Zelda and Impa were still alive, and only a few of the pikemen were down. They all had parted to let us through, though many of the archers, who I recognized as my horse archers, were running back, probably to grab their horses.

Beyond the pike line, the valley was almost carpeted with the broken and bleeding bodies of Ganon's minions, many of which were thrown to either side, likely by the charging Gorons. I looked up to see that the crossbowmen had not been hurt at all. Nabooru was rushing back, probably to try and follow us into battle. Mido was up there too, looking more than a little frightened, as well as relieved for whatever reason.

Another four minutes later, we emerged from the valley. The Gorons and the knights had driven a wedge through a seething mass of all manner of fell creatures. In fact, they were still pushing through the enemy, threatening to break through and split the enemy apart.

And then the infantry made contact.

The first casualty of this close-quarter battle was a heavily-armed Moblin that just had the unfortunate luck of standing too close to Azeru; the Gerudo warrior cleaved it in half promptly. My longsword cut through a few Bulbins in one swing. Behind me, the ten Iron Knuckles were absolutely smashing their way through every foe imaginable, making a beeline straight for a squadron of Darknuts.

And so we battled before the entrance to the valley. I faced so many different foes that I lost track - Bulblins, Moblins, a few Stalfos warriors, and innumerable others. The longsword Link had given me was lethally effective, as I often found myself scything through multiple enemies in a single devastating stroke.

That isn't to say that Ganon's forces didn't put up a good fight. More than once, Hylian or Gerudo soldiers would fall dead near me. Each time one fell, though, it filled me with rage, and I would stop at nothing to wreak terrible revenge on whichever creature had dealt the killing blow. Sometimes, of course, an enemy weapon would break through my guard and strike at me. But the armor intended for Zelda's late brother was of top quality and held firm. My arms got pretty cut up, though.

Once, I was rallying a group of Hylians to push into the enemy when I saw, in front of us, a pair of tall, gaunt, skeletal creatures bearing massive swords and light armor. I had encountered beings like these once; it was called a Redead knight and was the source of much fear among the Hylians. The foremost of these emitted a terrifying scream that caused several of the soldiers around me to freeze in fear, some covering their ears and crying out in horror. To be honest, after hearing that unearthly scream, I was half-tempted to do the same. Thankfully, despite being extremely unnerved by the scream, I managed to plunge forward and engage this first nightmare. It managed to bring its heavy sword around to block mine. Its partner emitted a similar scream, but by this point, I was already roaring out a war cry, so this scream didn't induce so much fear in me. I sliced the first in half vertically, then turned just in time to parry a ridiculously strong downward swing from the other Redead that would have split a thick log. The force of the blow drove me to my knees, but I lived through it somehow. It was then that Azeru came leaping in and decapitated the zombie-like warrior with her glaive.

As I got back up, I looked back and saw, to my alarm, that the whole group of Hylians that had followed me had been overwhelmed and massacred by a flood of Bokoblins. Worse, Azeru and I were completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of our troops. We stood back-to-back as more heavily-armed enemies rushed at us, sensing an opportunity to kill the commanders of the infantry force. I could see, in the distance, Nabooru cutting through the enemy, trying to fight her way to us.

But that sighting was blocked out by at least five Moblins as they charged at me. Hard-pressed to face them all, it was all I could do to parry each of their attacks. It took me at least a minute to bring them all down. When they were all dead, I quickly decapitated a lone Stalfos rushing towards me and looked over to see how Azeru was doing.

Admittedly, she had fared better than me. There was a pile of disarticulated bodies around her, and she was still cutting through enemies with broad, sweeping strokes of her weapon. But all was not well; she was limping, with a stone-tipped arrow embedded in her right thigh, and her left shoulder was bleeding heavily from some unknown weapon. Quickly I turned back to fighting, cutting down a few Bokoblins and another Redead knight with no problem.

But then I heard a cry behind me. I turned back to see Azeru dodging the massive sword of a Darknut, probably the only one to escape our Iron Knuckles. As I watched, the heavily-armored foe stepped in close and swung down on her. Unable to back up in time, she tried to block with her glaive, but the shaft snapped like a twig at the stroke. Without hesitation, the Darknut brought its sword back and cleaved the Gerudo commander apart from the sternum up.

I could hear Nabooru's despairing cry nearby, but didn't even look at her as I sprang at the Darknut, regardless of my own safety, only concerned with taking swift revenge on the overpowering hulk. The Darknut, imposing as ever, prepared to bring me down next to the Gerudo as I charged it.

Somehow, I managed to see where its armor thinned out around its neck. With a desperate battle cry, I leaped at the monstrous Darknut and swung down as hard I could for its neck.

If I had been wielding anything other than Link's old longsword, I likely would have perished then and there. But the long, hefty blade connected with devastating force and severed the Darknut's head from its shoulders. It certainly didn't have long to celebrate killing Azeru.

But I was still cut off. Nabooru was slicing her way with some of her fellow Gerudo towards me, but not fast enough. I was in danger of being overwhelmed by countless smaller, but no less formidable monsters.

Then a horn call sounded not far away. In front of me, I could see Ganon's creatures being thrown into the air. It seemed as though the Gorons had managed to get through the enemy lines and crash into the rear of one of the two halves that remained. I imagined Link and the cavalry were doing the same on the other side.

The enemies around me faltered, seeing this new danger behind them. Many of them fled in random directions, some towards our remaining infantry, some towards the unscalable cliffs, even a few straight into the oncoming Gorons. But most of those who fled did so across our infantry line towards the only opening to safety, to the west. More and more of the creatures fled as our infantry redoubled their efforts and began to push through them. Eventually, enemies were flooding for safety.

Not that they would find much. At this point, our horse archers had burst out of the valley and were riding down fleeing monsters and shooting them down. Link and his cavalry also rode enemies down once the retreat became a general rout.

By evening, very few of Ganon's creatures had escaped into the western valley. We had taken victory, but we had taken heavy casualties - somewhere around three hundred and fifty of our force - and victory hadn't come to us quickly enough to follow up with an attack on Ganon himself. So we all pulled back into Kakariko for the night.


	31. Chapter 31

"For pity's sake, can't it wait another day?" Nabooru grumbled at Link, Zelda, and I as she knelt by Azeru's day-old grave the day after the battle. Link had just finished asking her if she was ready for what we hoped was the final assault on Ganon's armies before taking on the King of Evil himself. Unfortunately, she wasn't taking Azeru's death very well. After the battle had concluded, she had sat on the blood-soaked grass of the plain, weeping over her comrade's fallen form, refusing to leave until a grave had been dug for the Gerudo commander. Even now, she had spent all day at the graveside.

She was in good company, though. Azeru was one of some three hundred and fifty Allied soldiers who had died in the battle the day before. As such, the Kakariko graveyard was filled with soldiers grieving at the headstones of friends, brothers, sisters, and comrades. And yet, the loss of so many had not been in vain, we were sure, for when the bodies of the fallen enemies were counted up, it was reckoned that Ganon had lost around fifteen thousand of his minions in the assault, almost the entire force he'd sent against us, while our losses were out of a good twenty-five hundred troops that had we had started the battle with.

The battle had been a bloodbath for both sides, to be sure, but we had come out with a greater portion of our full strength left. This, of course, presented us with a good opportunity to smash what little remained of Ganon's forces and to finish off the man himself.

But Nabooru was grief-stricken from Azeru's death, as the three of us youngsters could now see. So Zelda told her, "Alright. We'll wait a day while you say goodbye to your comrade."

Nabooru nodded to us in thanks. Link, Zelda, and I walked out of the graveyard and into Kakariko's central square.

The atmosphere there was not as mournful. It was more a sort of subdued happiness. Most of the people in the square had not lost anyone close to them, but were well aware of how much victory had cost. Still, most of the soldiers managed to put on a happy face and celebrate victory. As the three of us sat down on an unoccupied bench, I marveled at just how much change had come over each soldier. Besides the obvious, physical changes, like the numerous new scars that could be seen in each face, there was a new attitude to each fighter. Everyone had seen battle and had come through it alive. It was the start of a hardened, veteran fighting force. It was surely something to be proud of.

"So what do you two think?" Zelda asked me and Link. We both looked at her curiously, forcing her to continue: "About our chances, I mean?"

Link took one look at the soldiers walking by. "I'd say our chances are pretty good," he replied.

"Let's just hope Ganon doesn't have another army like the one we just clobbered," I stated.

"According to Impa," Zelda returned, "he shouldn't. And if he calls more monsters from where he was sealed, they won't make it in time to keep us from facing him."

Link and I nodded in contented acknowledgement. Although, the way Zelda had phrased her statement - _in time to keep us from facing him_ \- put a little doubt in me. After all, we were definitely going to face Ganon. But to defeat him? I knew nothing about the abilities of this Triforce that Zelda, Ganon, and I shared, but any object with the word "power" in its name couldn't be good news for us. I just hoped Link was fast and strong enough to handle such a formidable opponent as I imagined Ganon would be.

Zelda seemed a lot more confident as she put her arms around both me and Link. "That means we've pretty much won already," she finished.

 _And she said I was the one with the Triforce of Courage_ , I thought. Still, I found her hopeful optimism refreshing after a full week of tense preparations for a major showdown. To be honest, her confidence was infectious, as I began to feel better about our chances of finally defeating Ganon.

My thoughts were interrupted by Link as he replied to her, "That's good. It means I'll get to see Ruto again before too long." I grinned at him. His relationship with the blue-skinned princess still managed to surprise me even after all the time I'd had to get used to it.

It was now, though, that I finally got a chance to ask him, "Say, how did you and she end up together anyways?"

My brother-in-spirit was up to telling the story. "I guess it all began when I was called into action to defeat Ganon the first time he rose to power. In order to claim the Master Sword, I had to obtain three special stones, the Spiritual Stones. In searching for the last of them, I ended up getting Ruto out of the belly of a great fish. In thanks, she gave me the Spiritual Stone, letting it slip that to the Zoras - that's what her people are called. Did I ever tell you that, Brian?" I shook my head, so he continued, "Okay, well now you know. Anyways, she let it slip that to the Zoras, that Spiritual Stone is basically an engagement piece given by their princesses. I didn't really think about it until seven years later, when I encountered her in the Temple of Water. She reminded me that I had unknowingly gotten engaged to her. It kinda surprised me at first. But after I defeated Ganon, I started warming up to the idea of marrying her. She _is_ pretty, after all. So, last year, we finally tied the knot."

It was a strange story, to be sure. I looked at Zelda. I was about to ask if she had been bothered by Link's decision, but I figured that might put a strain on the conversation. So I merely looked back at Link and said, "That's pretty cool."

Link smiled and nodded at that. Looking at him and Zelda smiling like that was comforting. These two were a big part of what was keeping me going while I was still in Hyrule. In fact, after a silence of a few minutes, I turned to them and said, "You know what? I'm so glad I met the two of you. I've known you for only a couple months, but I feel like I already know both of you like my own family."

Both of them looked at me, their faces clearly showing that my comment had been a pleasant surprise. Then, on an impulse, I pulled out my cell phone. It only had a quarter of its battery life left. But it would be enough to take one or two more photos. "Everyone scoot in close," I said. Zelda and Link scooted in until we were virtually cuddled up next to each other where we sat. I held the phone up in front of us and said, "Smile, everyone."

The selfie that came out was easily my favorite picture from my stay in Hyrule.


	32. Chapter 32

The very next day, I found myself riding with Zelda, Link, Impa, Nabooru, Darunia, and a large troop of Allied cavalry across the plains. It was finally time to take the fight to Ganon and bring him down once and for all - or at least, I hoped so; I didn't really have a clue how sealing someone worked here. Once Ganon was gone, I could face whatever path lay before me, whether it lay with Zelda in Hyrule, or with all of my old friends in Oregon (at this point, I was fine with either).

We all knew this final confrontation wouldn't be easy, though. Hence, the large cavalry force at our backs. The Hylian knights were with us, of course, as were my horse archers. A few Gerudo warriors had also taken up bows and swords and ridded with us. The large force was meant to clear away any remainder of Ganon's forces and thus leave the way open for Zelda, Link, and I to make our way to Ganon.

Sure enough, as we approached the entrance to the western valley (which I had learned recently was called the Gerudo Valley), we could make out a respectable number of fell creatures issuing from it. But they were nowhere near the number that had participated in the battle for Kakariko, and, as I had seen so many times, their greatest strength lay not in their skill, but in their numbers. Sure, they still had our force outnumbered, but we could pretty much count on wiping them out.

As we neared them, I lowered the long lance I had been handed and spurred Dagda on to a charging pace, followed by the rest of our cavalcade. As our mounted, armored column made contact with the pitiful monsters, I could feel every impact of the lance in my upper arm. Each body pierced by the lance sent a jolt up my arm, a feeling of the raw power behind the horse and the lance. As the front of the column entered the valley, the horse archers at the rear were firing lethal shots from their bows, keeping the enemy from even attempting to impede our progress.

I didn't see if any monsters were left after that devastating charge, but there were, there couldn't be that many. At any rate, we made it into the valley without a single death on our side and proceeded to ride hard for the Gerudo people's fortress, where we were sure Ganon was holed up.

It seemed that every time I had gone through the valley to that fortress, I had taken less and less time on each occasion. This time was certainly no exception. Even I was surprised at how quickly our force rode into the courtyard of the fortress.

It was a desolate place. As we all reined in our mounts, the first thing that stuck out was the utter silence of the place. Our mounted battalion were the only living things we could see, at least on the outside. I turned over to Link and asked quietly, "Should we look inside?" He promptly nodded to this. So we all dismounted and proceeded through the various doors to search for Ganon.

It was somewhat anti-climactic when he couldn't be found anywhere in the fortress. There were no traces of his presence either, not even of the monsters that he had once stationed there. It was if everything that had lived in the fortress since the Gerudo had been driven out had simply vanished off the face of the world.

After the last room had been checked, we all met back in the courtyard, where Zelda, Link, the Sages we had, and I circled up and held a quick conference.

"Where do you suppose he could be?" Zelda asked.

"He sure isn't _here_ ," Nabooru answered rather tersely.

"We get that," broke in Darunia, somewhat annoyed.

"Is there anywhere else he could be?" I inquired. "The Castle, maybe? The Ranch?"

But Impa was already shaking her head. "You and Zelda would've had your Triforce pieces resonating when we passed those two places."

Zelda smirked at that. "Even more than they already are when it's just the two of us?" she asked.

Impa was about to make reply when Link cut in. "I'll bet you he's gone to the Spirit Temple," he said.

We were all silent at that. Then, one by one, Zelda and the other Sages (the ones that were actually there) nodded in affirmation that the Temple of Spirit was a probable location for the King of Evil.

Then Zelda said something rather strange. "Only Brian, Link, and I need to go. Everyone else should stay here. I don't want any unnecessary casualties from facing Ganon himself."

Nabooru and Darunia seemed displeased at the thought of staying behind, and Nabooru even opened her mouth, likely to protest. But Zelda cut her off with a raised eyebrow. That caused her to back off from whatever she'd been about to say and concede to the fair-haired queen.

As the three of us prepared to leave, the rest of the force proceeded to prepare a camp at the fortress. A rider was sent back to Kakariko to send for the rest of the army - just in case Ganon _did_ beat the three of us. Epona and Dagda were stabled in one of the front chambers on the fortress' ground floor. The gate to the desert beyond was opened, and Link, Zelda, and I exited the fortress.

The trek there didn't take nearly as long as it had when Zelda and I had led the mission to rescue Link from there. That may have been because we didn't have Impa, Ruto, and ten crossbowmen with us. So it took me by surprise when we came so soon upon the sizeable monolith with the statue carved into it that marked the entrance to the Temple of Spirit.

As we ventured into the basin that held the temple, I could feel my hand buzzing like never before. That could mean only one thing.

"He's definitely in there somewhere," Zelda said gravely.

"Waiting for us to come and clobber him," Link continued.

We all stopped on the half-buried patio of the Temple. I turned to the others and said, "Well, I guess this'll be what decides it."

Link and Zelda nodded at that. "Let's hope we survive this one," Link said.

Now it was my turn to nod in acknowledgement. As we stood there on that patio, I made a quick, silent prayer to the Lord for success. Almost immediately, I heard Kaylee's voice in my head, constantly repeating, _Go get 'em, Brian_ , among a host of other optimistic things my housemate had said to me over my time at the Onyx House. Then I drew the handed-down longsword and turned back to face the entrance to the temple. Link pulled the Master Sword from its case, and I could hear Zelda readying her bow. Then the three of us walked through the entrance together.

We came into the same large room that had previously been Link's prison. But this time, a different sight greeted us, causing Zelda and Link to gasp softly, and me to step back, intimidated.

For at the back of the room, in front of the statue there, stood one of the most physically imposing men I had ever seen. Standing easily seven feet tall, and built like a tank, he wore a thick cuirass made of some dark metal, long, heavy boots, and tan clothes underneath various other pieces of armor. He had no helm on his head, so we could see his flaming red hair and the deep olive skin of his face. His deep-set, amber eyes fixed us with a look of complete confidence, complete with a smug grin.

Seeing our reactions to his presence, he gave a deep, booming laugh that unnerved me immensely. Then, in a deep, resonant voice that exuded power and authority, he spoke: "At last, you have arrived. I have been awaiting you, Link and Zelda." Then he turned his eyes on me and continued: "And you. I have not encountered you before, but I trust you know who I am."

And I certainly did. This was the former Gerudo king, Ganondorf. Or, as we had all come to know him, Ganon.

...

 **Since this story is getting close to its conclusion, there is one thing I feel I must ask you, my dear readers. I am considering the idea of writing about what went on behind the scenes and the things that had shaped this story. I would like to know if you, my readers, would prefer I put it after the end of this story, or if it would be better to post it on my profile. Please leave a review with your preference. Once again, I thoroughly appreciate any and all reviews in general. And, finally, thank you all, my dear readers and reviewers, for showing me this great kindness in reading this work.**


	33. Chapter 33

None of us made reply to Ganon's challenge. Instead, in a show of defiance, Zelda nocked the first of her glowing arrows, Link shrugged his shield onto his right arm and drew the Master Sword, and I reached back and pulled out the longsword. The large man facing us laughed again and held up his left hand. I saw a shimmering, dark purple ball begin to form in his outward-facing palm. In a few seconds, he sent the ball flying straight at me.

Whatever that thing was, I _definitely_ did not want to find out the hard way. I sidestepped to my right, avoiding it by a handbreadth. The ball continued on until it hit the floor behind us with a loud, electric crackle. In reply, Zelda fired off a shot from her bow. The arrow sped forward, reminding me of a comet in its speed and intense glow. The wicked king leaned slightly to his left and avoided the shot before sending one of his own at Zelda.

Link stepped in between the energized projectile and the queen, hitting it with his sword. To my surprise, the ball reversed course and likely would have hit its sender, had not Ganon pulled out a massive, two-handed scimitar and hit it back. The ball of energy went back and forth for a while between Link and Ganon before the latter finally mistimed a deflection and caught his own energy ball full in the chest.

The impact staggered him quite a bit, and he briefly sunk to his knees. It was then that the Hero of Time charged at him, sword whirling above his head.

Ganon got back up quickly and parried Link's first strike with relative ease. The two crossed blades for a minute while Zelda took some potshots at Ganon. One of her arrows actually transfixed him in the arm, causing him to roar in a mixture of pain and rage. He delivered a hard roundhouse kick to Link's shield, causing the smaller lad to go airborne for several feet, nearly crashing into the back wall of the room.

Ganon then formed another energy ball and sent it at Zelda, before turning back to face Link.

Almost without thinking, I leaped in and deflected the missile with the longsword, sending it back the way it came. I was rewarded when it hit its sender in the back of the head.

Ganon pitched forward as Link rolled out of the way, then, as he recovered, turned a murderous look at me and Zelda. "So, you wish to challenge me as well?" he growled.

I was half-tempted to engage the giant. But before I could, Link gave a fierce war cry and charged Ganon again. The larger man took a step back at the last possible moment, causing Link to stumble forward as his swing hit nothing but air. The King of Evil then blindsided the Hero of Time with an energy ball that sent him flying back towards Zelda and I.

I gasped as Link skidded to a stop at my feet and didn't move. Zelda gave an uncharacteristic shout of anger and sent three arrows at Ganon in rapid succession while I dropped to check Link's pulse. Thankfully, it was still there, but I could tell he wasn't going to be getting back up anytime soon.

I was interrupted by a startled shout from the queen and a crackle of energy behind me and to my left. I turned to see Zelda just straightening back up; evidently, Ganon had sent another energy ball her way, which she had managed to dodge.

Instantly, I sprang back up, just in time to deflect yet another ball from Ganon (I didn't know who it was intended for). As Ganon and I sent the ball back and forth between us, Zelda, in mid-draw, said to me, "I was wondering when you'd get back up." I smirked a bit at that, then turned my attention back to the perilous game of ping-pong that Ganon and I were playing. He seemed to be having trouble deflecting his own energy ball and avoiding Zelda's nearly-limitless arrows (which appeared to be made out of pure energy) at the same time. Finally, he failed to dodge an arrow, which hit him in the right hand. As he jerked his arms back violently, he exposed himself to the energy ball that I had just hit back to him. He took that straight in the face. Already having been staggered, this latest impact put him on the ground.

I wasted no time in gawking, but promptly charged up the wide staircase, yelling like a maniac, longsword waving in crazy circles overhead. I reached the King of Evil just as he was rising to his knees and aimed a skull-splitting downward slash at his head.

Ganon just barely managed to bring his own sword between mine and his head. Half-swording to maintain his stability, he shoved back against me with all his might. This sent me staggering backwards, until I fell all the way back down the stairs.

We both got back up around the same time and stood there for a brief moment, facing each other across half a room. Then, in order to sound more confident than I was, I called out to him, "Come on! Show me what you got!"

Admittedly, I probably would have been better served just keeping my mouth shut. For Ganon responded to my challenge with a snarl, before charging down the staircase and imitating my downward strike.

I had a good half-foot on Link, so had more leverage with which to parry his blow. But it didn't make much difference, and I was forced to half-sword to keep from being driven to my knees.

We dueled for several minutes, neither of us scoring a hit on each other. Ganon's battlefield awareness was astounding, as he managed to keep track of both me and Zelda, often dodging her shots while blocking my strikes simultaneously. The Triforce of Power was blazing on his right hand as we fought; the Triforce of Courage was doing the same thing on my own hand as I hacked, stabbed, and parried.

As skilled as I had become over the past months, however, Ganon had years of experience on me. After a long fight, he surprised me with a knee to my groin. I fell to my knees, groaning at the pain, letting the tip of the longsword drop. Then, with a sickening sound of breaking steel, the massive Gerudo stomped his foot down on the blade, snapping it and rendering it completely useless.

Hearing that sound ended all hope I had for survival, let alone victory. Sighing in defeat, I closed my eyes, waiting for the final blow to come.

To my wonder, all I felt was a sudden, acute throb in my right hand, which made me double over in agony. I had barely enough strength to look up at Ganon to see what was going on.

To my surprise, he had sheathed his sword, and was holding out his left hand, as if to grab me from a distance. His right hand was doing the same thing, only directed at Zelda, who appeared to be in similar pain. It suddenly occurred to me what exactly he was doing: extracting both of our pieces of the Triforce. I had no idea if my piece would resist him and find yet another bearer, much less if Zelda's piece would.

When the pain finally stopped, though, I saw, at the back of the room, a massive object comprised of three huge, solid-gold triangles, stacked one atop two. It was the full Triforce. That meant one thing: there had been little to no resistance put up by Zelda's and my pieces of it. Ganon turned around and stood there looking at the giant object, taking some time to laugh victoriously as Zelda and I continued to hold our wrists.

Then he started walking towards the solid Triforce at a slow, ceremonial pace. I realized if he touched it, it was all over. Then I saw that only five feet away from me lay the Master Sword, still being held loosely by Link's unconscious body. I would, of course, never reach Ganon by charging, as he could simply sprint to the Triforce and touch it.

As if in confirmation, Ganon intoned, in a solemn voice, "At last, the Triforce shall be mine."

But then an idea formed in my head. I had seen Zelda throwing knives in her occasional training sessions back at Lon-Lon Ranch. I had no knife, but…

With a new burst of energy, I slid over and grabbed the Master Sword from Link's hand. Hoping to at least slow Ganon down, I roared and threw the weapon straight at him, just as he was reaching the top of the staircase. The Blade of Evil's Bane connected and sunk into Ganon's lower back, eliciting a sudden roar of pure pain from the giant as he stopped and knelt, trying to pull it out.

That gave me an opportunity I sorely needed. Silently and desperately praying to God that this giant Triforce was solid, I got up and sprinted up the staircase, past Ganon and up to the massive object. Without wasting a second - knowing full well that Ganon was dragging himself after me - I placed both hands on the bottom of the very solid Triforce of Power.

In that moment, everything seemed to slow down. I could hear Ganon shout in surprise behind me. Even more distantly, I heard Zelda call out, "Brian, make a wish!"

That caused me to look back, still touching the artifact. Ganon was looking up at me in what appeared to be defeat, and Zelda, still holding her wrist, bore a look of anticipation. And that was when I realized just what had happened, and its implications. Instantly, I knew my next course of action.

I turned my gaze to Ganon and, in as strong of a voice as I could muster, pronounced, "With this final blow, may my God seal you." Then, I braced my right foot against the side of the Triforce of Wisdom, and my left foot against that of Courage, and pushed up with all the strength I could muster.

The physical Triforce of Power was surprisingly light for being made of solid gold, but still had considerable heft, and it was _very_ solid. With one hand on its base and the other on one of its sides, I stepped back onto the floor and approached Ganon, who had gotten the Master Sword out of his back by now, and was facing up at me in total shock.

When I reached him, I adjusted my grip on the hefty Triforce piece. Then, with a fierce battle cry, I drove it down at him like a bayonet. The tip of the Triforce piece punched through Ganon's cuirass like a super-heated knife through snow, and into the King of Evil's chest. Ganon immediately screamed in agony, rage, fear, hatred, and a thousand and one other negative emotions, before vanishing in an intense pulse of white light.

The other two Triforce pieces levitated and separated, flying into Zelda and I and seemingly being absorbed into our bodies.

We stood there for two minutes, Zelda and I, panting in exhaustion. Then Zelda finally looked at me and stated seriously, "It is done. I can sense it: Ganon has been sealed."


	34. Chapter 34

It was another week and a half before the civilian refugees started to return to Hyrule. Zelda, Link, and I spent that entire time recovering from our ordeal with Ganon. Mostly we were resting, but Link had been hit by an energy ball when he had taken on the King of Evil; he needed to recover physically from that. Impa's palisade, which had never been finished, was quickly torn down, and the drawbridge of Hyrule Castle was repaired in preparation for the masses of returning civilians.

Of course, I did not witness much of this preparation, as I was bedridden during most of it. After the last battle, we had been whisked away to a room within Hyrule Castle in order to recuperate. This gave me a great deal of time to think. I was having a tougher time each day deciding whether or not to stay in Hyrule. I had long since exhausted all the reasons to favor either course of action, and as I lay in Hyrule Castle with the two best friends I had made on either side of me, replaying every possible reason to stay or leave in my mind became almost more tedious than actually staying in the bed.

Sometimes, Zelda tried to start conversations with Link and me. But we'd gotten through so much hardship, and it was still so soon afterward that we could never bring ourselves to talk about much. So most of what we did during that time was sleeping.

A notable exception to this routine was some days in, when we were all three invited to attend a wedding in the castle courtyard. As the refugees hadn't yet started to come in, we all wondered who could possibly be getting married in the very heart of Hyrule at that time.

The answer became readily apparent when we arrived at the wedding. It was being held for the young Hylian horse archer and his former Gerudo trainer; their names were Taryn and Evei, respectively. As the only people in Hyrule at the time were those who had fought in the war, the wedding ended up with a slightly martial twist: the happy couple walked up to the altar under a tunnel of raised swords. After that, I got to witness a wedding in the style of that world as Zelda performed the ceremony (for lack of anyone else to do it). The festivities afterward were splendid, in their own way. There was a great feast laid out in the open air of the courtyard, and afterwards, a few among the ranks who possessed musical instruments struck up tunes, to which the guests danced. At one point, a group of Gerudo picked up instruments of their own and played what I guessed must have been a lively folk song. Many of us laughed heartily as Evei taught her new husband a dynamic, swirling dance, which must have been traditional for her people; Taryn took to it pretty quickly, while the rest of the Hylian soldiers danced jigs beside them. Feeling light-hearted, I even borrowed a frame drum from one of the musicians and played it for a couple songs, to the laughter of everyone who knew me well, except for Link, who borrowed Zelda's ocarina and played right along with us.

All in all, we had much to celebrate during that week and a half.

…

Finally, the first people began flooding into Hyrule. The group that had gone through the Lost Woods were the first to arrive, with Saria and Ruto at their head. Zelda, Link, and I were all pretty much healed up when they arrived, and Link, nowhere near able to contain himself, launched himself out of the castle gates as fast as his legs could carry him. Everyone in the line of returning civilians got to see his tearful reunion with Ruto. Although, from what I heard from Link later that day, Saria also had given him the biggest hug she'd ever given him, relieved at his survival.

Mido had rushed out to welcome back Saria and the other Kokiri, and had apparently gotten a lecture from Saria about running off, but only before being surprised by an embrace by his long-time friend.

Malon, Rauru, and the group of refugees that had gone south with them returned a couple days later, and another round of reunions commenced. Zelda and I were present for the occasion this time, though.

In almost no time at all, Hyrule was back to its peaceful, vibrant state.

…

I stood nervously in the Temple of Time with Link, Zelda, and the Sages not too long afterward. The victory celebration had lasted for three solid days, and had taken my mind off of where I would go from there. But now, as I stood in the place where I had first arrived in Hyrule, clad once again in my Oregon street clothes and carrying my backpack, I fretted over the choice I now had to make.

The moment of truth was delayed for a few minutes as Link and I ventured into the back room to replace the Master Sword into its pedestal. Link had personally invited me to do it with him, as I had wielded the weapon, if only for a few seconds before throwing it at Ganon. So, each of us holding the hilt, we slowly lowered the Blade of Evil's Bane into the marble pedestal, the long steel blade sliding in as if it were a block of cheese.

After the two of us returned to the main room, Zelda had Link and I step before her in the middle of the room. "Link and Brian," she said, an official note to her voice, "the two of you have, on multiple occasions, gone into battle against some of the fiercest enemies Hyrule as ever faced and prevailed. As such, it is necessary to recognize both of you for your services to this realm." As she said this, Rauru stepped forward and handed her a long, narrow, elegant sword with a blunted tip.

Link and I both registered what was going on instantly; we each got down on one knee before the queen. Slowly and ceremoniously, Zelda lightly touched our heads and each of our shoulders with the flat of the blade before pronouncing, "Rise, Link and Brian, Knights of Hyrule."

The Sages applauded as we both got back on our feet. Then Zelda turned to me and stated, "Brian, I am sure you know what happens next."

I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. This was the moment I had been dreading for some time now. It took me a few seconds to find my voice. When I finally did, I slightly stumbled over my words: "Well, I'm...I'm not, well...I don't really know how...er...whether to stay here or...uh...leave, if I think about it."

One corner of Zelda's mouth shot up in a wry grin, or perhaps a laugh. My predicament must have been absolutely pitiful. But Zelda made no comment on that. Instead, she replied, "Well, I think I have an idea. Do you remember when I told you about when I sent Link back to his childhood?"

Suddenly, realization dawned on me. I couldn't help but grin widely at that. "I like this idea," I answered.

After a silent agreement between her and I, I spent the next minute and a half embracing Link, Zelda, and the other Sages as if in farewell. I don't think any of them knew what Zelda had planned, and I wondered just how surprised they would be when they found out. Then I stood, once again, before Queen Zelda as she pulled her ocarina out from the folds of her dress. She played upon it a soft, sweet melody, the same one she had played to get us to Hyrule in the first place. A familiar blue crystal surrounded me and I rose into the air, losing sight of the Temple of Time very quickly as everything fade to white.

When everything faded back into focus, I found myself standing on a rocky outcrop, part of a wide ridge that formed the summit of a high hill. I immediately recognized my new surroundings: Spencer Butte, just to the south of Eugene. A crisp mid-autumn breeze blew over the ridge, filling my nostrils and lungs with the familiar, comforting feeling of home. There were quite a few people at the summit of the butte that day, though none seemed to have noticed my sudden appearance, a fact for which I was glad.

Without hesitation, I whipped out my cell phone and dialed a number on it. As I stood there, a familiar and oh-so-welcome voice came over the earpiece. "Hey Brian," Kaylee said over the phone. "You're back!"

I smiled as I replied, "Yeah, I'm back. Have I missed anything?"

I was pleasantly surprised when Kaylee's voice returned, "Not at all. Where are you right now?"

"On top of Spencer Butte," I answered.

I heard Kaylee's laugh as she said, "Great! I'll drive over there right now. You should be just in time for dinner KP."

"Awesome," I responded. "I'll see you in a few."

"Yeah. Bye."

I stared at my cell phone for fifteen seconds before hanging it up. Then, taking a deep breath, I took a step off the outcrop and proceeded to hike down Spencer Butte.


	35. Epilogue

I looked around the main room of Lillis Hall on the U of O campus, reaching around to scratch the back of my neck. The tables and chairs that normally were situated throughout the room had been cleared away for the comic convention that Kaylee and I were currently attending. Despite my old aversion to cosplaying, it had been easy for Kaylee to convince me to go to the convention dressed up in a pretty convincing Link costume; she had dressed up as Malon.

I smirked as I thought about how much my trip to Hyrule had affected me. I had spent the first few months after returning to Oregon in telling Kaylee and some other Zelda fans at the Onyx House all about the adventure I'd had and all I had discovered. Kaylee had been a bit weirded out when I told her of Link and Ruto's marriage; as evidenced by the costume she wore today, she had always wanted Malon to get Link in the end. But she was quick to geek out over all the cell phone pictures I had taken.

But after those first few months, the reality of what had happened to me began to set in. In the nearly three months I'd spent in Hyrule, I had seen and done things which I never would have anticipated doing. There were the happy memories, of course; those of riding with Link around Lon-Lon Ranch, sword training with Nabooru, and laughing and joking with Zelda came quickly to mind. But there were also ill memories. During my time in Hyrule, I had seen young men fall with horrific injuries, countless beasts, frightening as they were, being cut down by swords and arrows, a young lady cleaved apart in the midst of a desperate battle, and a young adult broken and bruised from multiple beatings.

I had left Hyrule as a changed man, and I knew it.

At first, the changes were mostly positive. I began to get interested in cosplaying as a way to revisit my old adventures. Having taken a particular fancy to sword combat during my journey, I joined a swordfighting club on campus; some of the friends I made there, I suspected, I would keep for the better part of my life.

Once the bad memories started to flow, though, I began to try and put my experience behind me. The mark of the Triforce on my right hand never went away, even though it faded and began to resemble a scar from branding. After some time (and countless questions from classmates), I finally decided to have a crucifix tattooed over it. That made it look like a random burn scar from a hot piece of metal.

Now, two years after my return, I looked around uncomfortably. Dressing up as Link brought all those memories back. Especially the painful ones. I honestly hadn't thought about that when I'd agreed to cosplay with Kaylee for this convention. It didn't help that there were other _Zelda_ cosplayers in the giant room at Lillis, outfitted as characters I'd met and associated with.

Kaylee, standing next to me as we looked for a booth to check out, noticed my discomfort. "You alright, Brian?" she asked.

I couldn't tell her what I was thinking, I just couldn't. So I replied, "Yeah. It's just this costume. It's kinda scratchy around the neck." That was actually true. The collar of the green tunic I'd made for the cosplay was rather rough, and chafed at my neck.

As I scratched my neck again, I was aware that Kaylee was looking behind us. Then I heard her say, "Oh, Brian, look at _those_ cosplayers! They really know how to dr... _What the_...Brian, you might want to see this."

Intrigued by her reaction, I looked in the direction Kaylee was gazing. And then I saw them: Link, Ruto, and Zelda, side-by-side in the main room, the very same ones I had interacted with in Hyrule. They appeared to be two years older, and Ruto now held the hand of a very wobbly toddler (who looked, predictably, like a cross between her and Link), but they were definitely the same exact people. And standing next to Zelda, hand-in-hand with her was…

I immediately speed-walked over to the group, Kaylee close behind me. Link saw me coming and called out, "Brian! How are you?" When I reached him, I wrapped him up in the biggest bear hug I had ever given anyone since Kaylee had picked me up from Spencer Butte. When the other three people with him saw this, I heard a hearty round of chuckles. When I finally let go of Link, I turned to Kaylee and said, "I think I'd better introduce you to these people. This is Link, Ruto, and Zelda." The three of them shook hands with Kaylee, who looked quite stunned indeed.

Then I indicated the fourth member of the group and said to my friend, "And this is me."

...

 **Well, that's all, folks! Thank you all for your kindness in taking a look at this story. This will be my final author's note, so let me just cover everything that needs to be covered. First of all, many thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto and the fine folks at Nintendo for coming up with a great game and a compelling story for all of us fan fic writers to write about! My next thanks goes to my housemates at the Onyx House for allowing me to mention the House in this story. Third, thanks to Kaylee Ervin for her support from day one. Next, an especially big thank-you to my fellow writer FriedCuccoLady for her constant feedback, without which I doubt the story would have done well without. Another thank-you to my very good friend and fellow writer Lisa Enman (fan fiction username: KitteWolf) for getting me interested in fan fiction. My final acknowledgement goes to all of you who have read this story! I sincerely hope you have all enjoyed it! To close this out, I have posted a behind-the-scenes look at this story on my profile, if anyone is interested. Once again, thank you all for taking the time to read this tale!**


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